The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (19 page)

All right, all right. Focus.

I looked at her over my shoulder. She looked mildly amused, but highly affected by me. Oh, I could use this.

I turned back to face her and cleared my throat. “I’m sorry.”

“You said that,” she said and pushed past me, bowling me over with surprise.

What the hell just happened?

I followed her out to where she was hugging and thanking Belle. Mum was watching me like a hawk. She saw and knew everything, and when she saw me following and watching Soph, I knew she knew something was up, but I tried to act like it wasn’t. It wasn’t until she raised an eyebrow and yanked her head to the side, beckoning me to her, that I knew I had fooled no one.

I leaned down to be at her level, getting down on my haunches, and sighed. “I’m going to miss you, Mumma. I love to come—”

She butted in, saying, “You need to be careful, Maxton.”

“I will.”

“No.” She shook her head hard and screwed up her lips. “Well, yes, be careful out there, but you need to worry about her, son. Be careful. Be cautious and ever watchful. I see the way you look at her.”

Yup, getting nothing by her. “I know.”

“And I see the way she runs from you.”

“Dang, Mum, don’t hold back.” She cracked a small smile, but it bled away too quickly. “Be careful.”

“I will. I’ll make sure I won’t get my heart obliterated,” I joked, but when I saw her face, I knew I had it all wrong.

She shook her head slowly. “No, not for you, my son. For her.” I squinted in confusion. “Don’t break that poor girl. Don’t hurt her.”

“Mum,” I whispered, hurt that she would even think that I would.

“That girl only has one more love left in her.”

I looked over my shoulder at her. I sighed, closing my eyes for just a second before looking back at Mum. Sophelia’s light barely flickered at times and shined bright at others. Mumma was right—she probably did only have one more left in her. Could I be that one? Could I take that spot knowing she wouldn’t have room for anyone else?

“Why do you think I’ll hurt her, Mum?” I had to ask.

She smiled a real smile. “I don’t think you’ll hurt her, not on purpose. Oh, baby, that’s not what I meant at all.” I released the breath I was holding. “What I meant was…tell her. Either way, you have to tell her, baby. She’s not the kind you play games with or even take a whole lot of time with because she’s already broken.”

“Funny,” I said, but didn’t smile, “I had thought you didn’t really like her, that you didn’t want
me to
like
her.”

“I can only hope that you’ll make the right decision.”

I stared at her. “You think the right decision is letting her go?”

“Maxton, you best be going. Ivan will be waiting for you.”

I sighed loudly and kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Mum, vague as ever and just as beautiful.”

“Pish posh.”

I grinned. “Why don’t you and Ivan just get wedded already? You know you want to.”

She gasped and I moved swiftly out of slap range.

“Bye, Mum,” I yelled over my shoulder as she yelled and sputtered behind me. “See you in a few months!”

Sophelia watched the display and laughed a little. “Is everything all right?” she said, adding a small nervous laugh to her words.

“Everything’s great,” I replied, a spring to my step and my words all growly. She noticed and looked up at me, her mouth open just slightly.

Oh, great. The rest of this trip was going to be nothing but torture, wasn’t it?

I hugged everyone and they all said their goodbyes to Sophelia, saying how they hoped they would see her again soon. Her face, surprised, sad, happy, a myriad of emotions as she walked away from my family, gave me hope for this girl. Ivan was there to open the door for us. I hopped down and then tried to help Sophelia down, but she said she wanted to do it on her own. I lifted my hands in surrender and went into Ivan’s store to get a few things. He ran a communication gadget store, so whenever I came in he told me to grab whatever I needed in the way of handhelds and things of that nature. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really help me much since all the people I needed to talk to were right here, but sometimes it helped to be able to trade for things with them.

When I came around the corner after my plundering Sophelia was talking to Ivan. He looked at me over her head.

“What does
melys
mean?” she asked him and waited. His face was a little cautious as he watched me. Or maybe surprised? “Or
fy melys
?” she tried, thinking she was getting it wrong.

He finally said, “Where did you hear those words?”

“Maxton calls me that sometimes. I was just curious…what it meant.” She looked down at her boots. “I wanted to see if I was right since Maxton said he wouldn’t tell me.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell you?”

“He said I wouldn’t like the answer.”

Ivan chuckled, leaning over a bit. “Oh, my Maxton boy.” He looked away from me and regarded her again, his gentle eyes not fooling anybody, as I’m sure they weren’t fooling Soph. He had always been a calculating man. “What do you think it means?”

“I was a slave when Maxton found me. I escaped, that’s why the reward is out for me so…” She shrugged, rubbing her chin on her shoulder in an awkward move that wasn’t like her. “I assumed it was a nice way of saying—”

“Why do you think he would call you that?”

I blinked. She thought I would have called her a slave in some other language just so I could say it without her realizing it?

She shrugged. “Because it’s what I am. It’s what I’ve been called for over half my life. Why
wouldn’t
he call me that?”

He cringed, but recovered and gave her a level stare, all bunched eyebrows, a flat mouth, and unreadable eyes with a small, tilted smile. He didn’t look at me again. “Sophelia, I know Maxton. He wouldn’t have risked himself or his job for just anyone. He had too much at stake.” I felt my chest buckle a little under his words and begged him to stop. Was he disappointed in me? “And you’re not a slave anymore. You haven’t been a slave since you ran, and you never will be again, I suspect.” He took a deep breath, and so did I. “Take care of Maxton for me out there?” She nodded and I balked that she agreed so readily. “He’s always been the one to take care of us, and it would be nice to know that he wasn’t—” He smiled, glanced at me and winked. “
Fy melys
means…my sweet.”

I cringed.
Traitor!

She gasped softly. He touched her cheek before turning and leaving her there, stupefied. I still couldn’t see her face.

That was something the Elites called their mistresses and wives. A lot of people didn’t bother with getting wedded anymore. They saw it as a useless Old-World tradition. But there were a lot of people in the stacks who still honored it.

We would see Congress parading their trophy women through Congress Hall where they sat up top during the meetings. They would kiss their cheeks and call them
My Sweet
. It was a very powerful term of endearment and Ivan had just ruined it for me. Now she was going to think I was a freak for calling her that, one, and two, I wasn’t going to be able to keep saying it without her thinking I was a psycho.

              I sighed and put on my game face as I rounded the corner at regular speed so she wouldn’t know I was dropping eaves. She looked startled when she saw me, but I didn’t give her a chance to say anything.

“Ready to go?”

She nodded quickly. “Yeah,” she breathed.

I squinted and went fishing a little. “Everything okay? You look…pale.”

She cleared her throat and straightened. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

I said my goodbyes to Ivan, giving him a big, hard hug. He whispered to keep her safe and I leaned away, confused by his words. Ivan and my mother both were worried about her more than they were worried about me. I would have laughed, but something told me there wasn’t anything funny about it.

On our way out, she stopped in front of a watch and picked it up. She opened her mouth to ask him something, but Ivan said, “Take it.”

“But—”

“Take it.”

She nodded slowly, her brow bunched in confusion, and put it in her bag on her shoulder. Ivan closed the door, putting the glamour of the mechanical invisibility back once again. I looked both ways outside his store to make sure no one was looking or watching for us, and looked at Ivan over my shoulder once more.

“Remember what I said, Sophelia,” he said to her, but he was looking at me. “Take care of him. Take care of each other. You’re all you’ve got now.”

I swallowed hard, noticing how I was doing that a lot lately, and grabbed Sophelia’s hand before slipping out the door as casually as any customer would.

**

Chapter Eleven

slave - a person who is the legal property of another, as stated by the laws of the government. They are forced to obey them and usually worked excessively long and hard, and without payment.

Sophelia

T
hings changed when we left his family’s hideout. I had heard him talking to Ivan, that old man, about how he had messed things up with me so badly that there was no chance, that there was no way that I would want him. Would he even want me to want him or was he just stating facts, having some kind of male conversation?

Since then, he had been different.

He held doors for me, made sure he always went first when we staked out a new area, talked to me as we went to sleep about everything and nothing, just like he had at his mother’s house, and he always made sure to get some new food that he said he wanted me to try. He watched me take bites, like they mattered, like he truly wanted to see if I enjoyed it or not and how much.

Why would he do that unless he…

But how could I let myself continue with that line of thinking? I was a slave and would always be one to some degree, because you were what people saw you as. Perception was everything, wasn’t it? And that fact would never change no matter how badly I wanted it to.

The first day after we left was spent pretty quietly. I was turning everything I had just absorbed around in my brain when I felt him tap me on the shoulder. When I looked he stared straight ahead but ticked his head to the right. I looked over on the sidewalk and saw a vendor with a box of puppies. The only dog that was still being manufactured for production was the English Mastiff. It was determined to be most docile breed yet big enough to not cause problems and could take care of itself. We’d seen pictures of some of the animals that used to live on Earth and there were so many different animals that they didn’t bring with them during the Exodus. This was not some Noah’s Ark situation—thanks, Mom, for Bible lesson—there were very few animals on our planet at all and of the ones that were here, most of them had been genetically altered or spliced, or even mechanically enhanced.

But the Mastiff remained an untouched, adorable, fat little ball of fur that I could never and would never be able to afford the taxes to own one. But to see if the vendor would let me hold one? I’d ask.

Because I’d never seen puppies in real life before.

And they were causing my heart to become all warm and fuzzy just by looking at them.

Puppies had been deemed completely useless, but good for the mental health of its owner and even people in the general vicinity of one, therefore, it was spared from processing. My guess? The mistresses of Congress wanted a puppy and told their men to make it so.

I must have gasped or grinned or did some other equally embarrassing, girly thing because Maxton grinned back at me before taking my hand in his and tugging me over to the other side of the street to the vendor. The puppy’s cute little whines and the way they tilted their heads could almost distract me from how warm Maxton’s hand was.

We weren’t the only ones looking at them, naturally. I told Maxton we didn’t have to wait around, we could just go, but he crossed his arms and looked around the people in front of us as they poked their fingers in the holographic cage’s two small openings, which were left unprotected for food, I assumed, and egged the dogs on, which earned them a stern glare and a loud, “Don’t poke at the dogs. How would you like it if someone poked you, eh?”

Maxton snorted a laugh as the guy poked the man in his ribs, which prompted him to hastily move along, muttering. We got up to the cages and all I could do was stare. I heard Maxton talking to the him before I saw the man reach through the cage’s holographic barrier, the chip in his arm allowing him to pass without a zap to his skin, and took out the one closest to him. He handed the dog roughly to Maxton, who turned to me to let me look into big, chocolate brown eyes that begged me to buy him and save him.

Maxton held the puppy out for me to take, which I did, and I couldn’t stop my giggle as the dog’s wet, cold snout nuzzled into my neck. When I looked up at Maxton again, he was watching me, his mouth relaxed enough to have his lips parted, his eyes half closed but alert. When he saw that I’d seen him and was watching him back, he just smiled slowly before taking a step closer. With the puppy between us, there wasn’t much room for anything else. He put his hand on the wall beside my head. It was a completely different feeling than it had been when he’d done it in his mother’s house, when he’d been angry, when he thought that I was about to run out and betray him.

He leaned down, bending his head over the puppy on my chest to see his face. Our heads touched, but he pretended not to notice. Or maybe that had been his intention.

I felt like I was being chased, without the option of knowing what game I was playing, without being able to be the loser or winner. It made me nervous the way I felt around him, the way he looked at me as if he was beginning to understand something that had, until then, been a mystery.

I didn’t know if these were good or bad things, but if I was going on my gut alone, which my mother always said was best, then I liked being chased. In fact, I wanted to slow down to make sure that he caught me.