Page 23 of All or Nothing
“Of course not.”Your body is far too lush to belong to a child.“You are just a small adult, it’s obvious.” She grinned, taking another bite of her food.
“I guess once you’re all set up with the assistance we should start working on the plan, maybe even start getting you packed up. How long will you have before you’ll have to leave this place?”
My appetite fled me. “I just paid rent before I left to go to Quellor,” I told her, my tail winding around my lower leg. “So I have another three weeks—that’s fifteen daycycles here—before they’ll start taking action against me.” I set my spoon down, myujennitasting like ash now.
“Wow, so soon?” She put her utensils down, surveying the wide open space around us. “It’ll be a busy few weeks then, but I think we’ll be fine. We’ll just have to save all the sightseeing for once we’re settled into the new place.” While we’d been on the shuttle I’d promised her several times to show her around Escheva, to get her acquainted with billieuan culture.
“If you say so,” I said, hating the glum and sulky sound of my voice. I crossed my arms over my chest and kept my eyes locked on my half-empty bowl ofujennion the table.
“Hey, it’ll be alright, Xoll,” she said gently, leaning towards me and trying to make eye contact with me. “I know this is going to be super hard for you, and I hate that you have to do it in the first place, but we’ll get through this, and then we can rebuild. Most things can be replaced—”
“Some of these things are priceless. Irreplaceable. One of a kind,” I snapped, interrupting her. I knew she meant well, but she wasn’t understanding just how much some of these things meant to me. Like my paintings—there wouldn’t be enough room to store them at a government dorm, and even if I didn’t love every single one, most were precious to me.
“Then we’ll hold onto those things,” she assured me, her brow wrinkling. “We don’t have to get rid ofeverything, I promise—”
“No, we’ll probably have to. The dorms are going to be small, and we’ll have to squeeze in both of our things—”
“I don’t have anything, Xollen. Just the clothes that you gave me.” She frowned, pushing her plate aside. “Are you okay? You seem tense.”
“Of course I’m tense!” I burst, my arms flinging wide. “My whole life is crashing down around me! And for what, just because I decided to help some strangers? Why is the Goddesspunishingme for that?” My breaths started coming in angry pants, my hearts thundering in my chest. It felt good to finally give voice to that. Until Joss flinched and leaned away from me.
“I’m sorry, Xollen. I know this is hard and you’re right, it’s not fair. I wish I could help more but I’m not—Um, I think I’m done with dinner, so I’m going to just go to bed now.” She grabbed her unfinished meal and dumped it into the recycler, her back stiff and kept carefully facing me. “I’ll see you in the morning!” she called over her shoulder with a cheer that felt false. “Good night!”
Then she was hurrying away, leaving me alone with my fury and my congealing meal.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Growing Pains
JOSS
OKAY, SOthat had gone about as shitty as it could go.
I hated the tears that were streaking down my face as I marched back to my room. Thank god I wasn’t anywhere near his room—I was in the mood for a good cry now and it was comforting knowing he wouldn’t overhear me.
His anger had really upset me. He’d basically said outright that he regretted rescuing me and the others, just because it meant that he wasn’t rich anymore. Did that also mean he resented me? Was he going to be that mean all the time now? My stomach sank at the thought. I hoped he was just cranky from what a long day we’d had and had had a moment. If he talked to me like that all the time…
It would be like being with Alex all over again. He’d constantly criticized me, telling me I was lazy, that I ate too much, that he didn’t want to spend his money on me when I wasn’t “taking care of myself”, because in his eyes that made it a waste. Like if I wasn’t living my life how he wanted me to, then I didn’t deserve his help or his care. It was a wound that still really fucking hurt.
I shoved my frizzy blonde hair back from my tear-streaked face with a huff.Thatwas because of Alex, too—my natural hair color was a dark brown with hints of red in the sun, and I’d loved it, but Alex kept telling me how much prettier I’d look with highlights, then after awhile it was that I’d look better fully blonde, and because he didn’t want to help me pay for a salon visit I’d done it at home and fried my hair. He’d been happy, but I hated it. I missed my old hair, missed how long and wavy and flowing it had been. Now it was just a frizzy tangled mess, but it was also my security blanket, and I didn’t want to cut it all off.
Dread settled like a cold, heavy rock in my gut. Had I made the mistake of a lifetime hitching my wagon to Xollen’s horse? It suddenly hit me that I’d decided to shack up with pretty much a literal stranger. I’d just gone with my insane urge to live with a guy I’d just met because he was hot and the idea of it was interesting. But shit—Uraka might have been right about this guy. He could have been faking being nice to make me comfortable with him. Hadn’t a whole bunch of famous serial killers done that sort of shit? I could be dealing with the alien equivalent of Ted Bundy for all I knew.
Now safe in the privacy of my room, I gave into the looming freakout. I tore my borrowed clothes off, tossing them to the floor in a rumpled puddle, and slipped on my familiar old pajamas, the only things I truly owned in all the world anymore. They were starting to get ripe, but it was a comfort to have something so familiar touching my skin. It was enough to let me get some decent breaths in, to stop my anxiety attack from spiraling into a full-blown panic attack. I also got up and locked the doors, finding an option that let me set a passcode that would let me keep Xollen out, if it came to it. That also made me feel a little more secure.
Once I’d finished getting ready for bed I’d calmed down a little more, and I realized I was doom-spiraling. Dr. Jackson said it was normal for someone like me who’d had the worst happen so often in my life, but that I couldn’t let myself turn the possibility of something bad happening into the conviction that something bad definitelywouldhappen. Because it hadn’t happened yet it could also be that thebestoutcome would be what went down, and I needed to remember that.
Sure, Xollen could be a narcissistic control freak who was planning on either murdering or taking advantage of me, but he could also still be the really great guy I’d been crushing on so far who had just had a super bitchy moment. There was no point in convincing myself that he was space Bundy. I could be cautious, make sure that if that was what was going on that I was prepared and protected, but I should also keep myself open to things being good.
Feeling calmer, my exhaustion slammed back into me. Between the long boring day full of bureaucratic nonsense and the stressful end to our dinner, I’d used up every single spoon and had had to borrow more from the next day or two. I was beyond excited to finally have a bed I could sleep in, too; sleeping on the floor had gotten really old really fast back on the shuttle, especially with four other people crowded around me every night. I pulled back the fluffy duvet-type blanket and settled into the silky sheets, sighing in contentment as my head sank into the pillow.
I was asleep in minutes.
OKAY, SO XOLLENwasn’t a serial killer.
But he was proving to be a huge pain in my ass.
“This chain is solid platinum, Joss,” he told me. “It was a graduation gift from my parents!”
