After a burst of a helo ride, followed by a trip home in the Hercules, Chase found herself back at the Star, no longer fighting with Pippin, and yet feeling more irked by him than ever. She’d pulled Tristan aside and hauled him into a confession of their situation that pretty much covered every word—except for Pippin’s thoughts on Tristan’s feelings for her.
“Should I be sorry? I mean, I’m kind of mad.” She popped her knuckles. She’d been hoping that telling Tristan would make her cool down, but it was having the opposite effect. “I am mad. Ever since he’s felt persecuted, he’s been…cruel. And now I don’t want to point that out because we’re finally talking to each other.”
“Well, first of all,” Tristan said. “Romeo is about as hetero as they come.”
“Pippin knows that. He’s just got a crush. A big crush. And he’s caught up in the futility of his feelings.” She eyed Tristan, wondering if he felt the same way. She kept her hands in her pockets and ignored him when he pinched her ear. If Pippin was right and Tristan was in love with her, she wasn’t going to mess with him. Hurt him.
They would be friends. Just friends.
Chase roughed up her hair only to smooth it back down. “Want to see something?”
He smiled, and even that was flirty. Tristan was standing too close, but in that moment, Chase realized that any distance with him felt close.
Chase led Tristan to the chapel, a place she never went. She dragged the thick oak doors open and watched his face go bold with wonder. The chapel could do that to a person. Strike them with secret greatness and remind them of the Grander Everything. She pointed at the steel and stained glass.
“It’s a replica of the Cadet Chapel at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. It’s supposed to make us feel connected to our life after this. The real academy. Where we become airmen.”
Tristan walked down the center aisle. The door clamped shut behind them, and they were alone. “It’s weird,” he admitted, “but beautiful.”
The skin of the walls reminded Chase of a jet, while the patchwork of colored panes lit up like a scene from a sci-fi movie. She sat in a pew and rested her elbows on her knees, her head in her palms. “Lots of cadets love this place.”
“But not you,” he said from a few feet away.
“Not me,” she agreed. “I saw the real thing once. My father got me up at zero dark thirty, tossed me into a fighter without explanation, and flew us out to Colorado. It was my first time in a jet.”
She closed her eyes and remembered the sort of awe-fear of speeding toward a sliver of sunrise. They had brushed by white-peaked mountains and set down on a patch of grass before a building shaped like a dozen upended fighter jets. Silver steel spires had caught the gold of the sun.
“That sounds like a good memory.” Tristan sat backward in the pew in front of her.
“There are a few,” she admitted. “If my time with Tourn had been all bad, I would have called it a nightmare. But there were a few sunrises. Maybe what I should really hate him for is giving me hope.” She looked up and felt the breeze of relief that she now associated with talking to him. “You know, I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Not even your RIO?”
She let silence be her answer and then wondered how many times she’d shut down when Pippin reached out. She always held back, pushed him away, but then he did too.
Chase laughed hollowly. “I think Pippin and I have been so wound up in being inseparable that we never bothered to get to know one another. It’s weird.” She got up and paced the aisle. It made so much sense. Pippin didn’t really know why she pulled away—he didn’t know the nasty details about Tourn. About Janice. And Chase didn’t know about Pippin’s family. About why he was at the Star, if he so clearly didn’t want to be in the military.
Could it really only be about money for his family?
“I don’t know how to talk to him. Not about important things,” she admitted. “I tried questioning him a few days back, and he made it out to be the Spanish Inquisition.”
Tristan was watching her storm back and forth with a crooked eyebrow. “Do you trust me?” he asked.
“That’s not a question.” She tried to hide the flash of a smile. “That’s missile lock.”
“Then pretend I have you in my sights,” he said. “Important topics have to be worked up to. For example, tell me something small, but something you wouldn’t tell anyone, least of all me.”
“How will that work?”
“It’ll help you relax. Or distract you at least. Think of it as a dare if you want.”
“I love dares.”
“I know. That’s the one thing everyone seems to know about you.”
Chase sat on the pew before him. “I’ll try, but no promises.” She closed her eyes and imagined her life as a sky and her body as a solitary jet speeding through the blue. It had never felt like anything could touch her. Or keep up. And after the heartbreak of failing so hard at pleasing Tourn, she’d embraced evasiveness as her true nature, but it wasn’t. Not really. She selected a leaf—a small one—out of her sky.
“Your hair,” she said.
“My hair?”
“Ilikeit.SometimesIwanttotouchit.” Chase snuck a look and found his smile.
“It reminds my mom of her brother,” Tristan explained. “He died before I was born. I’m named after him.”
“And here I was thinking you were named for that ancient love triangle.” She paused. “Pippin told me about Tristan and Iseult. Inescapable, cursed love. Stolen hearts. Depressing stuff. Pippin seemed to think it was unrelentingly romantic. He’s that way about most fictional relationships.”
“I’ve never read it.” Tristan’s expression was cool, sure of itself, and unyielding. She already liked it ten times better than his polite look. “I don’t believe that fate can be malicious. Bad things happen, sure, but they’re not deliberately aimed at certain people. That’s just the great love story lie.”
He made her laugh, and Chase felt surprisingly light. Happy almost. “Tell me something from your sky.” She wondered if he’d ask what she meant. He didn’t.
“In the name of even trade, I will say: your hair.”
“What about it?”