Tristan had told her she was a bad pilot when she was mad, but it was worse than that. Chase was a bad pilot when she was emotional—she couldn’t do anything when her feelings took over. How long would it be before she crashed Dragon because she was upset with Pippin or annoyed with Arrow? Tomorrow? During the trials?
She had to go back to how she flew before Phoenix showed up. To being cold and clean and clear.
Without care.
? ? ?
Tristan wasn’t hard to find. He was hard to find alone. Cadets trailed him between classes and at the chow hall. He was constantly being fangirled the way Chase was used to getting attention for being Nyx.
Although with Arrow around, Nyx was pretty passé.
It didn’t make her jealous so much as curious as to why her peers’ allegiances had gone Canadian. Then again, Tristan knew their names. He asked them where they were from and quizzed them on what they wanted out of their careers. He engaged. Eh, that seemed like so much work…
In the end, Chase found him in the hangar during free hour, talking to Phoenix the way she sometimes talked to Dragon.
“Is Phoenix a girl or boy?” she asked.
He turned around and eyed her cautiously. “Boy. Yours?”
“Dragon is a dragon,” Chase said. She climbed to the top platform of the ramp stairs so she didn’t have to stay close to him. She put her back to Phoenix’s cockpit, her eyes taking in Dragon. Her baby’s silver skin was bent and hammered, unlike the other two Streakers, the mirror sheen lost in a patchwork of mends and scratches. A running tally of Chase’s slip-ups. Her reflection in the metal was a blob of uniform and a stand-up stretch of messy brown hair.
Tristan looked up at her. “Here for a rematch?”
Chase leaned over the rail, looking down at him. She’d come to apologize for the fight. To smooth things over so there were no hard feelings—no any kind of feelings—between them. It was harder to find the words than she’d imagined.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He twisted a mechanism in the engine bay. “One of my stability lights has been going on and off. I’m checking to see if it’s the censor or an actual problem.”
“Who taught you how to do that? They never let me anywhere near the engine.”
“Adrien.” He wiped his greasy hands on a rag. “She wasn’t supposed to, but I paid close attention. She’s a bit odd in all those classic genius ways. You know. You have Pippin.” He smiled, and it knocked into her. She looked away. “Plus, if I’m going to fly a bird, I’d like to know how she stays in the air.”
“Adrien created the Streakers, didn’t she?” Chase had been mulling that thought since the elderly engineer had arrived. “I’d assumed they were all-American.”
“Does it change your love of Dragon to know she’s a foreigner?”
He was probably teasing, but Chase answered flatly.
“No,” she said. “But it puts this whole project into new perspective. Canada reached out to America despite the danger of attracting Ri Xiong Di’s attention. It’s a tangle of deception, and now there are two countries on the line.”
“Think of it this way.” He looked up at her from the bottom of the ramp stairs, leaning on the rail. “Canada had a strong gun, so we looked for a strong arm to handle it. Weaponry is nothing without manpower. Besides, we’ve been trying to help America since Taiwan. Although, the Star cadets have told me it doesn’t feel that way from the U.S. side.”
“Americans are very good at thinking we’re on our own. We tend to parade that truth through the streets. Ri Xiong Di played to our weakness by isolating us.”
Tristan climbed the ramp stairs and sat next to her. She scooted to the far side and gripped the rail.
“I came here to apologize,” she said without looking at him. “You were trying to help me during the race, but I…I didn’t see it. I’ll be focused from here on out.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Should I be recording this? Seems like Nyx admitting she was wrong is a big deal.”
Chase fought a smirk. “You’re thinking of Sylph. I’m wrong all the time. I’m just usually too fast for people to notice.” She meant in the sky, but the sentence found a different meaning. Chase was too fast on the ground. Too fast with people. But then, slowing down left you vulnerable. Like now.
What was happening? Every time she talked to this guy, she spilled feelings. “I have to go,” she said, but he grabbed her arm.
“You don’t have to go.”
“You have no clue what I have to do.”
“Well, I don’t accept your apology until you tell me what you meant by ‘guts have costs.’”
She pulled her arm back and looked at him from the side. “I don’t need you to accept my apology.” But she did. She could feel it all over. She’d been an idiot—a bad pilot. And that was the only thing she could not afford to be at the Star.
He raised his eyebrows at her like he knew these things, waiting for her to speak.
“That saying…guts have costs…that’s something my dad told me the day I got this.” She held out the scar on the back of her arm. “I was trying to run the recruits’ landmine obstacle course on his base. I didn’t make it.”
“Then what happened?”
She almost snapped “That’s none of your business” out of habit. But she kind of wanted to unload. Tristan had brought this sort of purging into her life with his innocent questions and “no judgment” looks. If only she could find a way to talk to Pippin the way she’d opened up with Tristan…
Her eyes moved to Tristan’s slowly. Carefully. “I nearly bled out. I had to get a transfusion, and by the time I woke up, I was a few thousand miles away. Back in my mom’s apartment.” Chase remembered being groggy and bandaged, her nose already drying out from the stale smoke in the air. “The next time I talked to him was…”