Page 63 of Savagely Yours
“If that’s the case, then maybe this...um…maybe this, uh, relation…ship can work after all?”
I smiled. “I don’t see why not.”
“But I have a theory,” she quickly added, her cheek brushing mine, and it felt like she was smiling herself. “I made a friend in the Accounting department, and he?—”
“He?”
“Likes men.”
“Only?”
“Focus,Dez.”
I didn’t know how she expected me to focus with her draped all over me like a winter coat, smelling like a naked weekend morning.
“Tapley, let’s establish some ground rules about me, you, and who you can be friends with.”
Chuckling, she tapped the notebook. “This first. Now, my new friend told me that Totten is falsifying records. It’s inflating the number of deaths from infections related to the pandemic. The deaths aren’t adding up with the numbers from the infirmary. They’re also forecasting data. Right now, they’ve calculated fourteen deaths from the Infection when there have only been eight cases at the infirmary in the past month. So, where are the additional six coming from?”
“Any theories?” I asked.
She shifted as if to sit back, but I grabbed her wrist to keep her in place. “None yet,” she said. “I mean, I feel like they’re killing people and hiding it under an Infected status. I just can’t figure out who or why.”
“I have our meeting today. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“There’s something else.”
I set aside the notebook and nudged her back to my lap. I returned to stroking the length of her spine, soaking up the comfort of having her in my arms again. Juniperwasbetter than having her in Sanitation, but it still wasn’t having her in my space. I wanted to smell her in my sheets and see her shoes next to mine in the entryway.
“I’m struggling with a significant amount of guilt,” she began, eyes clouded. “Juniper isn’t Woodhaven, but it’s still ten times better than what I was dealing with in Sanitation. I’m doing what I can for them, but I feel like I don’t deserve to be in Juniper. It feels unethical.”
Obviously, she didn’t see herself through my eyes. To me, she was worth far more than Woodhaven could ever dream of becoming. I despised this place. Yet, lately, I found myself wavering on leaving. I could protect her, but after watching her get as sick as she did, I didn’t know if I could stomach taking heraway from all the resources Totten had to offer. Had we been out in the thick of things, she wouldn’t have survived.
“Do you think you deserve to suffer?”
“It’s more like I don’t deserve reprieve if they’re still suffering,” she clarified.
“Honestly, I’d be worried if you didn’t feel guilty. But think of it this way—you didn’t get out to leave them behind. You got out because, out of everyone there,youare the best positioned to make a change. It’s kismet, almost. Tapley, you have the mind for this, the expertise. And you have me.”
Her expression softened.
I continued. “And now, with this new currency system, I wonder how many other ways they’ll try to fabricate poverty. From the way they talk in the meetings, it’s like they think poverty’s necessary. I feel guilty myself, knowing I benefit from something that hurts everybody else. Something that hurt you.”
She scoffed. “Necessary? How, if it’s built on exploitation? Poverty’s a punishment, through and through. It’s about hoarding, not about preventing scarcity.”
Larke,I love you.
It’s pathological at this point.
But you’ll probably never know because I’m, apparently, less afraid of bullets than I am of my own feelings.
I’d feared this very thing nearly as much as death back in my twenties, and this was probably one of the reasons why.
Obsession.
Compulsion.
Addiction.
