Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
“No, I mean with my friends. We would gossip and stuff. It took my mind off the climbing. Never mind. It was just different.”
“Did you just call me bad company?”
I get another side-eye. “Ya know, for a fuckin’ cynic, you’re awfully sensitive about what people think of you.”
“Nah, I’m not. I’m just trying to make a good impression on ya. But I’m not sure it’s working.”
She smiles, but doesn’t look at me. “Well, if that’s true, it is.”
“You like me.”
“You like me.”
I laugh. “I do like you. Ya asked why I was being a dick? Well, that’s why.”
“You’re a dick to me because you like me. Got it.”
“It’s not that. I just need to know what you’re doing and why. Because I don’t get invested in much these days, Clara.”
“And you’re afraid I’m gonna fuck you over.”
“A little, but not really. I haven’t got much for you to take. It’s just… I haven’t had a partner in a while. I don’t mean women, either. I mean a partner. Someone I count on. Someone who counts on me.”
She looks at me now, not smiling. “Your… soldier friends. That’s who you named when you said you’ve saved people before. What happened to them?”
“What makes you think something happened to them?”
“Because you came here to Tau City to attend War College alone.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. It was… understood. So what happened to them?”
“Dead.”
She frowns. “All four?”
“All four.”
“It was some kind of battle?”
“I guess.”
“That’s… not a good answer.”
“Why not?” She shrugs, not looking at me. “Come on, Clara. Fill in the blanks. Let’s see what ya got.”
“I don’t know much about war. Not enough to fill those blanks in.”
“No idea at all then, huh? Your brain is too simple?”
She takes offense to my characterization, but that was the point. “Fine. If it was something to do with war, but not exactly a battle, then… someone made a bad decision and it cost them their lives.”
I huff. But don’t say anything.
“It was you. You made a bad decision and cost them their lives.”
“Keep going.”
“Wow. That sucks.”
“Keep going.”
She thinks for a moment. We’re just passing the eighth floor now, and as we do this, I scan the people waiting in line for jolts and jumps, looking for Anneeta. But she’s not here.
Clara thinks for a minute. She answers as we pass the ninth floor. “Those things in your eyes. That make them go bright.”
“The augments.”
“They don’t work right.”
I stop, she as well, and then she turns to look at me. “Congratulations.” I pan my hand to the space in front of us. “We’re on the tenth floor and you didn’t even have to think about it.”
She doesn’t move and neither do I. People come up behind us, parting around us like water, and she narrows her eyes. I’m expecting a question, but not the one she throws at me. “Can I sleep in your bed?”
I grin. “Absolutely.”
She turns right towards my door and I come up behind her. When we get to it, she steps aside, allowing me to open it for her. She goes in, but I hesitate for a moment.
Because up-city Clara Birch has somehow gotten a hold of me. She’s kinda weak, a little bit clueless, and I would never, not in a million years, be into a woman like her if she hadn’t been dropped into my life without my consent.
But I like her and I’m glad she’s here.
I step through, kick the door closed with my foot, slip my jacket down my arms, hang it on a hook, take off my shirt, and toss that on the floor.
Her eyes drop down to the floor where it lands, then dart back up to meet mine. She’s got questions. I can practically see them running through her head as I watch. But she doesn’t say anything. Or step aside.
“I was being a dick earlier,” I say, “because I actually think you had unreasonable expectations of that man of yours. Most things are out of our control. And if this is something you’ve been conditioned to do—have unreasonable expectations of people, especially if you’re trying to exceed them at the same time—then I’m gonna disappoint you eventually and it just feels like a setup.”
“Wow.” Clara takes off her jacket, drapes it over the arm of the chair, and then sits down, kicking her new boots up on my footstool. “You’ve got baggage, Tyse.”
I grin as I take off my battle belt and hang it across the back of the spindly chair. She’s not wrong.
“Also, I thought I was rigid with my two decades of ‘poised, proper, and polite’ training. But you? Wow.”
I walk over to the bed, the side closest to the chair, and sit down. Then I lean over and start unlacing my boots. “I’m just being upfront with you.”
“No. That’s not what you’re doing. You’re… preempting the disappointment. So when that day comes and I’m looking at you like you’re a piece of shit for doing”—she waves her hand in the air, huffing—“whatever it is you did, then you don’t have to feel guilty about it. You can just point to this night and say, ‘See? I told you I was gonna disappoint you.’ And then you won’t have to take credit for it.”