Page 22 of This Cruel Fate

She yanked her hand back and nodded. Stop. Stop. Stop.

“I’m sorry.” This time it was Adonis who was apologizing. Xolia could have laughed. They were the last two people one would associate with a willingness to apologize, and now they had each said sorry within five minutes of talking.

He turned left down a familiar street. They were almost at her apartment. And it was with a bitter, sinking feeling that Xolia realized she didn’t want to lose Adonis again. She frantically searched for anything else to ask him, to keep that connection open. “At the gala, you said there were countrywide protests, but the bureau hasn’t dealt with anything like that.”

“Atalia’s in a bubble. If you think Peter has the best shot at winning, you haven’t been paying enough attention,” he said as he pulled up to her apartment building.

Panic coursed through Xolia. She wasn’t ready to step out of the car. “Thank you. For everything.”

“I’d do it all again for you, Xo.”

They stared at each other. Underneath the shadows and the missing years, with the faint tinge of cedarwood cologne in the air, Xolia felt out of her depth. “Don’t say things like that, Adonis.”

He leaned towards her, into her space. She screamed at herself to put more space between them, but she found herself falling. Their noses nearly touched, just a hair’s breadth away from each other. Their breaths mingled in that heady space between them.

“I need to leave.” She hadn’t realized she had spoken out loud. Not until Adonis pulled back and grabbed at the cuff of her sleeve. He pulled a pen out of his pocket.

“Let me see your arm.”

She held out her forearm to him, all pale and unmarred skin. In clear print, he wrote out a phone number. His phone number. It was so childish, so like the time he wrote down the encrypted radio wave they had used to talk to each other without anyone else listening in back in the barracks. “Until next time,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper.

“Goodnight.”

Staying in the car any longer would be a bad idea. Xolia forced herself out of the car and refused to look back. She tugged the sweatshirt sleeve down her arm. Marshall couldn’t find out. Not that she had done anything wrong, with Adonis at least. Or had she? She didn’t notice men like she noticed Adonis. She didn’t even look at Marshall like that, finding their connection to be based more in their shared history than in physical attraction.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. With each step she took towards the apartment door, the entire weekend washed further away until it felt like no more than a fever dream, and those hard-line thoughts about living for herself were reduced to half-baked ideas about asking for compromises. With an immeasurable amount of shame, she knocked on her third-story apartment door.

Chapter Eleven

Marshall opened the door, his face haggard, the bags under his eyes suggesting he hadn’t been sleeping well. His eyes lit up the moment he saw her, and he pulled her into a hug she didn’t deserve. A hug she didn’t want. She tolerated it for a few brief moments before gently pushing away from him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Because that was the truth. Whatever else she might be feeling, she was sorry to have hurt him.

He lowered his eyes, taking in the clothes that weren’t hers and touched the ends of her still-damp hair. “Where were you?”

All the words she should say lodged in her throat. She couldn’t tell him if she tried. Had Atlas reached out to him? Would Marshall tell Krista? She’d be back on her daily suppressant checks in a heartbeat. She’d lose her job.

She shook her head, pulling back from him even more. “I can’t tell you.”

He grabbed her hands, pulling them up between their chests. “Why not?” His thumb stroked the fingers on her left hand. A left hand that was ringless.

Tension froze Xolia, and her jaw was set so hard she was afraid she’d break her teeth. She prayed that Marshall wouldn’t notice, it was such a new thing, maybe he had forgotten.

He lowered his hands. Xolia started to exhale before his next words shattered what little hope she had. “Where’s your ring?”

“I kept it here, where it would be safe,” she answered, unsure if that truth would help or hurt her case.

Marshall backed away from her, his features all drawn up. “Tell me where you were.”

“Marshall, I already told you?—”

“Right, you won’t say anything,” Marshall seethed.

“It’s not that I won’t.” It was. “It’s that I can’t.”

“Can’t? What do you think I’m going to do, Xolia? Turn you in? Did you do something illegal?” Marshall ran a hand through his short hair. “We’re supposed to be a team.”

That ignited Xolia’s own indignation and hang-ups with Marshall. “A team? Right, and that’s why you wouldn’t leave the gala when I asked you to. That’s why Rowan told you she applied for that stupid job and you never told me. You don’t listen to me anymore. Some teammate you are.”

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