Page 24 of This Cruel Fate

“If my friendship is such a burden to you,” Xolia said slowly, “you don’t have to bother with me anymore.”

“Wait,” Rowan said, “that’s not what I?—”

“It is,” Xolia interrupted. There was no hesitation. All the hurt and lingering confusion swirled around Xolia. “You knew what that position meant to me, and you went behind my back. Get the fuck out of my house.”

All Rowan did was swivel to look at Marshall. That was the tipping point. Xolia grabbed Rowan’s arm and pushed her from the couch. “You don’t need to look at him, I’m telling you to leave.” Venom dripped from each word in an ugly reveal of Xolia’s deepest truths. Rowan’s eyes went wide and even Marshall stepped away from Xolia. Her muscles shook. It’s not supposed to be happening this way.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Marshall whispered to Rowan.

Xolia seethed. While it had been some years since she was a child, she was instantly transported back into her earliest memories, when the barrack caretakers had talked down to her in an effort to quell her burgeoning feelings and power.

They continued their whispered conversation up until Marshall shut the door behind Rowan.

“That wasn’t okay, Xolia,” Marshall said.

She didn’t care for the slight drawl of exasperation, like she was in the wrong. Like she hadn’t been betrayed by Rowan. “She knew how badly I wanted that job,” Xolia said, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears. It was a broken desperation that she hadn’t heard from herself in years, not since she let go of her dreams to be in the Senate.

Marshall lifted the inner corners of his eyebrows. Pity. “She wanted the job too.”

“Why are you defending her?” Xolia couldn’t calm down, her emotions wouldn’t settle. “All I wanted was for one thing in my life to matter.”

“Don’t I matter?”

She scoffed. Was he willfully missing the point? “This has nothing to do with you,” Xolia shouted at him. It maybe had a small thing to do with him. Probably. It did.

Marshall drew in a deep breath, his entire upper body inhaling and exhaling. “I don’t know what you want.”

Neither do I. Xolia wanted to scream. She wanted to run. To change something. She kicked at the couch, ignoring the small flare of pain in her toe. “I just want to go to bed. Please don’t bring anyone else here.” She walked away from him.

“Do you want me to call Krista?”

She stopped but didn’t turn. “No.” Krista had been so proud of her; the next time they spoke, she couldn’t be like this. She couldn’t let Krista down, not when she had such high hopes for Xolia.

Xolia slammed the bedroom door shut behind her, and crawled underneath the covers and pulled them over her head. As the minutes dragged out, heavy exhaustion settled over her. Once the emotions ebbed, she was left feeling empty. Her outburst hadn’t fixed anything, it had just made it all worse. How am I supposed to make things go back to normal after this? That was the last thought on her mind when she slipped into a fitful and restless sleep.

Chapter Twelve

Three days after The Argument, as she had dubbed it, found Xolia finally setting up a new phone. Atlas never had shown up at her apartment to demand answers or provide any of his own. He never had returned her things, nor ridiculed her for getting shot, nor bragged about his own escapades that night. It was as if it had never happened. That unnerved Xolia more than the lingering quiet between her and Marshall or the indefinite leave of absence Rowan had insisted she take at work. All she’d had was three days of sitting around the house, questioning if there would be any consequences she would have to face.

Eventually, the lack of answers drove her to the store where she got herself a new phone, rather than wallowing and waiting for Atlas to remember her. Without Marshall to offer his brand of unhelpful advice or remind her of Krista’s maxims, Xolia purchased the newest model the store carried. It had internet access, the very thing she had denied herself for so long. The promise of unguarded information was so tantalizing that Xolia forgot why she had ever denied herself in the first place.

At home, she turned on the device, staring noncommittally at the dark screen as she made her way to her bedroom. She flopped onto the bed, one arm hanging off the side and the other clutching the phone. Her dangling arm fiddled with the side of her mattress that sported a small tear. She grasped a small slip of paper inside. Her eyes widened and she pulled it out. It was Adonis’s number that had been hidden and quickly forgotten in the chaos that had been the rest of that night.

She sat up, staring at the ten digits in one hand. And a new phone in the other. Before The Argument, she had told herself she wouldn’t talk to Adonis. Now though. . . I still need to return his jacket.

The borrowed suit jacket still hung in the back of their shared closet, shoved to the farthest corner of Xolia’s side. She hoped Marshall had forgotten about it. If she could return it to Adonis, she would have the chance to say thank you and then they could go their separate ways. She could forget about him again, leaving him to the anecdotes of her memories.

The thought of letting Adonis go sent a strangely hollow pang through her heart. Not that he was really in her life now, but he offered her the promise of something more. I wouldn’t be doing anything wrong by just talking to him.

Xolia groaned. If she had to argue with herself, she was already in the wrong. Krista had told her that once, when Xolia had her sights set on a senate seat. She tucked Adonis’s number back into its hidden nook. Regardless of the state of their relationship now, she and Marshall shared too much for her to leave him.

Hadn’t she and Rowan shared just as much, though? More even, from their earliest memories in the barracks. What was to become of them now? Were they doomed to be echoes of each other, each carrying a piece of the other, always there and always known, but never to see each other again? Xolia’s breath quickened. If she was losing Rowan, she couldn’t also lose Marshall.

As Xolia was about to toss the phone to the other side of the bed, it chimed. A message from an unknown number. Lingering anxiety was quick to transmute itself to dread. Was it Atlas?

She tapped on it. Xolia, it read, I’ve been trying to reach you for some time now. Please respond at your earliest convenience. Regards, Peter.

Her throat had constricted by the end of the message. Why would Peter want to talk to her? Had Atlas told him where they had gone? Was Peter upset about the gala still? He was the ultimate authority in the country, he could put her back through a rehab center or have her back on daily suppressant checks with a single breath. Having just made it to no checks, she wasn’t ready to give up that taste of freedom. It was the most she had felt like herself in years.

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