Page 107 of Ezra
She’s warm, soft, passionate. She’ll always have her thorns, but those thorns—her wit, banter, the way she scrunches up her nose at me when she’s annoyed—I can bear, happily, if she’ll have me.
Speaking of roses, I have none to give her this time. I can only hope I’ll be enough.
I knock impatiently on her door. When she opens it, I don’t wait for an invitation, crashing against her and claiming her mouth. She staggers backward, but quickly wraps her arms around me and kisses me back just as ardently.
“You’ve been crying,” I murmur, breaking away and nuzzling her nose, noting the redness of her eyes and the remnants of mascara wiped from her cheeks.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” she admits, pulling away. “Oh, Ezra. These people ruined the gala. It’s like whenever we take two steps forward to do something right, we get thrown ten steps, a hundred steps, back. Everything’s fallen apart.”
Katrina wanders into her living room, and I follow her. “What matters is you and your father are alive.”
“I know. I just don’t understand. What more do they want? Why do they have to hurt him like this? He’s planning on announcing his retirement tomorrow, and I was going to take over. What more could they want?” She huffs, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. Her gray sweater and knit pants are far from the elegant sage gown I saw her in earlier this evening. “It’s giving him this paranoid complex I can’t talk him down from.”
“You spoke with him?” I ask.
She nods. “Just a few minutes ago. He’s at home, holed up like some doomsday prepper, where they know they can find him. He says he’s done running and hiding.”
“Some people just won’t listen, Kat. There’s nothing you can do to reason with them. It’s a waste of time. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
She gazes at me. “How can I not try?”
“Katrina, I know you love your father.” I take her hand. “And it meant the world to me, hearing you tell him we’re together. But there’s only so much we can do. He’s retiring, and hopefully that means a quiet life, away from all of this.”
Her shoulders deflate. “I know you’re probably right. It’s just...really hard to accept.” She pinches the bridge of her nose with her free hand, trembling. “And crying doesn’t help anything, but it’s the only thing I can do right now. I feel so powerless. I’m tired of feeling like I’m taking my life into my hands every time I leave the house.”
Her vitals show intense levels of stress. She gazes at her trembling hands. “And now this. I can’t get them to stop.”
I pull her gently against me. “Any more stress, and you’ll have a panic attack,” I murmur. “We need to calm you down.”
I bring her to the couch and pull her into my lap so she sits sideways, then curl my arms around her and hold her closely to me.
“When did the world become so insane?” she whispers.
“I don’t know,” I reply, gently rubbing her back. “If I did, we could put a stop to it together.”
“I’ve never felt so defeated, Ezra. There’s no future for Humanity First. I was going to rename it, do something different. But I can’t keep going up against things like bombs and innocent people getting killed. I can’t handle the guilt that comes with it. I’m not strong enough for this. I can’t carry this entire movement myself. Someone will make me a martyr. This was never what I wanted.”
I soothe her and rest my forehead against her temple. “I know. But you can’t think this way. It’s not you, and it’s not your father. This goes deeper than pro-bionics getting angry, or TerraPura, or Humanity First. But my team and I will get to the bottom of it.”
“I know you will,” she whispers. “I just worry it won’t be soon enough, and I want all this to be over.”
I press a gentle kiss against her brow. “Let’s think of happier things, Katrina. When it’s all over—what should we do?”
“Hire a team of expert therapists?” Katrina offers dryly. She chuckles, and I feel her muscles slowly begin to relax against my body. “I don’t know. I decided I’d be taking Humanity First over and do something different, but now...” She rests her head on my shoulder. “I’m worried every time I get in front of a podium, I risk being the next unlucky Kennedy.”
“After tonight and everything that’s happened before, that’s certainly a valid concern,” I agree, my biocomponents surging when I think of Katrina injured, the target of a bullet, a bomb, orworse. Whoever has it out for the Carsons is serious. They mean to take both Robert and Katrina. She’s just as much a target as her father, and I can’t take any chances assuming otherwise. “What will you do instead?”
Katrina is quiet, then says, “apply for a PhD program here in the city. I can get my doctorate here without having to leave, but after that?—”
“It’s goodbye New Carnegie, hello France, or Germany, or Spain,” I muse quietly.
“Maybe, yeah.” She seems hesitant. “That’s what we talked about. But I don’t know anymore. I feel like I don’t know anything.”
I curl my hand around her thigh as though trying to keep her here with me, trying to imagine what it would be like to be parted from her, how much more my gratification drive would react in overwhelming emotion after one year, five years, ten years, seeing her board a plane and never return.
“I understand.” I’m reluctant to let myself think about the possibility of us never being together the way we want to be. That time with Katrina will always be limited in some way beyond what her natural lifetime can allow. My systems are raging, telling meno, this is manageable, there has to be a solution.
She seems to be coded in much the same way. “I refuse to give up. This is...” She squirms in my grasp, but I hold her fast. “We shouldn’t convince each other that there’s no future when we just don’t know anything. What matters is we’re here, now, right?”
