Page 36 of A Cougar's Kiss
Chapter 13
Shya clasped the blue pouch in her hand. She ran her fingers over the gold cord that held it closed and wondered why she hadn’t used the medicinal orbs at all since she’d been above ground. The thought had first occurred to her last night after she’d received the message from Nisa. How had she found her?
And how had that contact with the person she’d been closest to all her life, ended with a rush of memories that made her feel small and unseen all over again?
“I’m glad you responded to my message so quickly,” Nisa said now that she’d arrived in Miami.
She was sitting across from Shya, her elbows resting on the table, hair pulled back from her pretty face. Nisa’s hair had grown in the months they’d been separated, so the springy black curls that used to frame her face in a bush like Shya’s, was now to her shoulders in thick puffy waves. It was a more mature style to Shya’s way of thinking, the style of a joined shifter who was helping to govern a zone of their people.
“There was no use in hiding,” Shya replied. Her hands were wrapped around a mug still warm from the tea she’d fixed moments ago when she and Nisa came into the kitchen.
“But there was a point in running away?”
“Yes.” Shya lifted her chin as she answered. “Do you know how it feels to be overlooked, Nisa?”
“Come on, Shy. We grew up together as the first two children of the Assembly, only we were girls. Everyone expects boys to carry on the legacy, but our parents didn’t have that type of luck. Of course, I know how it feels.” Nisa sat back in her chair. She hadn’t wanted any tea but had a bottle of water that’d she’d already half finished.
Shya shook her head because as smart as Nisa was, there were still so many things she didn’t know. Perhaps because they didn’t directly affect her or what she’d always planned to do with her life.
“Other than being a girl, I was never like you,” Shya told her. “I was never like anyone at Oasis. And I don’t mean that to sound like I’m ungrateful or complaining because I’m not. It is what it is, and I came to terms with that a long time ago. But finding a place for myself wasn’t as easy for me as it was for you.”
Nisa’s eyes widened. “Easy? You call going against my father’s will and investigating a case he wanted nothing to do with easy? Or perhaps you think falling for the wrong shifter was my defining moment?”
“I think you made your defining moment,” Shya snapped back. “You followed your dream and when that moment came, you jumped up and grabbed it just like you’d always planned to do. Well, that’s what I’m doing now.”
“By stealing a board and coming above ground with a guy you’ve got the hots for?”
“How is it different from what you did?”
Nisa didn’t respond.
“How did you know I had the board?”
“Did you forget that your father and I created the Holodeck? Uncle Nick may have mapped out the structure for how security would be handled through technology in Oasis, but I was the one who looped in everything else—the shifter DNA database, bunker floor plans, passageways and inventory. I created the portion of the system that monitored all inventory coming in and going out of Oasis. So, when a board serial number mysteriously disappears from a listing, I take notice.”
“But you didn’t know I had it? Or you would have called me on it a long time ago.”
“Now that, you’re absolutely right about. And the reason I didn’t know it was you who had taken it was because that’s not something my best friend would do. Neither is leaving the safety of her home without even bothering to tell me. So, what’s going on with you, Shya? Why all this secrecy?”
She lifted the mug to her lips and took a slow sip. Keller had slept on the sofa last night and she’d missed his warmth in the bed. There seemed to be one startling moment after another for her lately. She had never thought of sleeping in a bed with Keller, just the sex. That’s all that had really consumed her mind about him in the past few months, but last night she’d felt something different on a couple levels.
“I’m sick again.” The words tumbled slowly from her lips the moment she set the mug down.
Worry immediately filled Nisa even though she didn’t speak. Shya picked up the scent and took a deep breath. This was exactly why she’d kept this to herself for so long. She didn’t want the people she loved to worry about her, not any more than they’d spent her entire life doing.
“It started to get bad about a year ago, the joint pain, fatigue, sometimes loss of appetite.” When she realized she was clenching the mug so tightly that her hands were beginning to shake, she released it and let her hands fall into her lap.
“The medicinal orbs still worked, I was just using them more frequently than before. Nobody noticed, which was great, because I needed to keep this to myself. If I was going to get sick and die this time, I didn’t want all of you worrying over it every day or going crazy trying to find a way to fix it.”
“You didn’t want us to do anything to try and save your life?” Nisa’s voice wavered on the last word and then she slammed a palm on the table. “How terrifically selfish of you, Shya! How dare you sit here now and tell me you’ve been sick for a year but that wasn’t something you thought you could’ve shared with me or anybody else before. Did it ever occur to you that it wasn’t your place to tell me what I could and could not worry about?”
“Did it ever occur to you that I had a right to my privacy? I had a right to keep this one thing to myself and deal with it in my own way. Because I’m an adult, you know. The same way you wanted your parents to see you as an adult and give you the respect and responsibility that they gave everyone else in Oasis.”
“This is not the same!”
“It’s exactly the same!”
They were both yelling now and Shya’s body trembled with the anger that had been on a low simmer for this last year, or perhaps all her life. But Nisa wasn’t the one she was angry with, it was herself. She should have taken this stand long ago and she hated that it had taken this renewed sickness and this man, to bring her to that conclusion.
