The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (20 page)

But then other times I would think about the absurdity that he
would be
chasing me. Why would he? Who was I? I was nobody, I belonged nowhere, a slave, and my fate rested in the hands of this treacherous planet’s worst. Why did I think I was worth his affection for even a second?

I felt his thumb rubbing between my eyebrows and jolted, my gaze flying to his. His voice was colored with concern as he said, “Now how can you have that look on your face when you’re holding that adorable furball?” When I said nothing, just continued to stare down at the puppy while I rubbed his head, he said, “What were you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly.

“Uh huh. I believe you as much as I believe that puppy’s not completely in love with you right now.” I looked down further to see his eyes closed. I rubbed behind his ear and he groaned, making us both laugh. Then he opened his eyes and just stared up at me—again with the begging.

“You can add one more name to the list of people who find you fascinating.”

I rolled my eyes with a laugh and acted like I hadn’t gotten his implication. “He is not a person.”

He laughed silently before nodding once. “Touché.”

“Where did you imagine you would live?” I blurted out. I shook my head a little. “I mean before you started your job and all. When you were little, where did you want to live, where did you see yourself, what did you want to do?”

He seemed more than a little taken aback by my question, but proceeded with a quiet, cautious answer. “I always wanted to live in the valley.” I felt my eyebrows rise. “Surprising? My family always thought so, too. But I would have loved that. Way out there, in the middle of nowhere, no one around, no techs, no Militia, nobody to tell me what I can and can’t do on my own property. It would be like Earth’s early settlers. I think I would have liked that. I could have made a trip to the city once a month. It would be great. Or…I could have lived on the cruise ship. I would have liked that, too.”

“So…” I grinned, “either total isolation or so many people crammed into a cruise ship on the Red Sea that you can barely think in peace.”

He nodded. “Yeah. That about sums it up. You remember what I told you, from my dad; life would be a big, awesome journey or it would be nothing at all.” He smiled and it was so completely genuine that I was jealous.

“I love that quote, saying, whatever it’s called.”

He rubbed the puppy’s ear and said, “It’s Helen Keller. You heard of her?” I shook my head. “She was deaf
and
blind.” I felt my eyes bulge and he nodded. “Yeah. She was a total badas—I mean. Totally awesome.” I felt my smile coming on. “I don’t remember the actual quote, but it’s along those lines. My dad loved to tell us about amazing people and the things they did. He loved Earth’s history. He loved…” His smile turned sadder, his eyes casting down, his lips quirked up on one side. “He loved anyone who had a story to tell, that could teach us something. And he was so forgiving and easygoing. He said that people don’t make mistakes, they just make a learning curve for everybody else.”

I laughed a little, laughing even more when the puppy squeaked in protest at being jiggled around.

“Your dad and my mom should have met. They would have gotten along. She was such a…saint,” I finally muttered when I couldn’t come up with a word big enough to describe her.

“I bet she was. I bet she was amazing,” he told me pointedly, his gaze burning the side of my face with its heat. I caved and looked up at him, biting my lip. “And then she had you. Amazing people generally make more amazing people,” he joked and winked cheekily.

I nudged his stomach with my elbow. “That’s not even a remotely true statement.”

“I know,” he sighed, feigning dramatic sadness. Then he leaned down to catch my eyes again. “But she did have an amazing daughter.”

“And your dad had an awfully altruistic son.”

That took the wind out of his sails. He leaned back a little, his smile fading. “I’m not sure what my dad would think of me if he were still alive.” He scoffed. “If he were still alive, I wouldn’t be a black market trader. I’d be a…petting zoo attendant.” Neither one of us laughed. “I wish he were here though. I’d love to talk to him right now, even if he would be disappointed in the man I’ve become.”

I paused and then jumped into the abyss of no return. I took his hand from the puppy’s head, entwining it in mine, our fingers interlocking like they knew the way to go all by themselves.

“You don’t need to be forgiven by your dad,” I said softly. “I think he’d be really proud of the way you’ve taken care of your family. And complete strangers who did nothing to deserve it, even though it might have cost you…a lot.”

His breathing was a little ragged as he sucked in breaths through his mouth, his eyes wide, his head right above mine just inches away as his eyes stayed on mine, sinking right into that abyss with me. “Thank you, Soph. You don’t know what that means to me.”

I squeezed his hand, pulling away gently, and looked back at the puppy. The air between us was too charged. I smirked down at the dog. “We’ll name you Mr. Fluffles. You may only be named Mr. Fluffles for a few minutes, but it’s—”

“Hold up,” Maxton said, holding his hand up, his lip twitching as he tried to remain serious. “No, no, no. The guy can’t be named Mr. Fluffles. Let him keep his manhood.”

I laughed with a scoff. “He likes Mr. Fluffles!” I looked at my new little friend. “Don’t you, buddy? Tell him you want to be Mr. Fluffles.”

“Oh, for the love of everything sacred and good,” the vendor muttered off to the side and glared at us. “Shut up, the both of you. It’s a female. No Mr. Fluffles, no Spike, no Killer, no Ringo, no Yoda. Her name is Fifi. Now pet her and shut up or be off with you.”

Maxton and I both looked at each other and erupted into hushed laughter over the puppy’s head. He quickly put his arm around my back and turned us to face the other way when we got another glare. “Shh, shh,” he coaxed, even as he kept silently laughing. His head tilted to look at the pup. “Well,
Fifi
, I guess you’re pretty cute.”

“She’s adorable. I’ve always wanted one, just like every other person on this planet, but you can’t always have what you want, can you?”

Another heated, charged silence ensued where I refused to meet his gaze before he said, “No, you can’t.”

I involuntarily inhaled sharply and glanced at him because his voice has changed so quickly. It was low and rough. I didn’t know what that meant, but it did things to my lungs apparently because it was harder to breathe.

Someone came up behind us and asked to hold one of the puppies. The vendor told them no, they could only buy it.

I shot my gaze to Maxton, but he was busy avoiding my gaze for once as he scratched under Fifi’s chin.

“Okay, time’s up.”

“All right, just one second, please,” I replied to the vendor’s barked order.

I lifted the puppy up so I could see her face. “I’d love to rescue you, but this is a trip you can’t come on, even if I did have the silver to pay for you.” And that soured my stomach at hearing that. This puppy will be sold just like I was sold. Like a slave. “Someone awesome is going to buy you and take you home. They’re going to have lots of kids to play with and lots of red dirt to run around in. No granite streets for you.”

I nuzzled her nose before handing her over to Maxton, who was watching me with a little smile tipping up the corner of his lips. He took her and told her, “What she said. Thanks for hanging out with us, Fifi.”

He passed the dog over to the vendor and then surprised me by putting his arm around my back and directing me out into the street. I wasn’t sure if I was giddy or not. My gut was swarming. But then he leaned down and pressed his mouth to my ear.

“Militia, six o’clock.” I blinked up at him. He hadn’t wanted to touch me; he’d been trying to maneuver me. Made more sense. I was chagrined about the odd sting that settled in my chest that he hadn’t just been trying to get close to me. He took my blinking as confusion over what he was saying. “Six o’clock means over there.” He pointed discreetly.

“I know.”

No, I didn’t know anything. I’d never been so confused in my life.

He kept glancing back until he said we were in the clear and removed his arm from around me. More confusion took hold of me. So he
had
been doing it just because of the Militia. But then why had he taken the time to stop and show me the dog? Then I remembered something else and it caused even more chaos in my head.

“How much did it cost you for me to hold that puppy?”

He didn’t look at me as he said, “Don’t worry about it. Besides I’d pay it ten times over to see you be that happy again. Even if it was just for a few minutes.”

My carefully held-in-place shield started to crack. I felt it in my chest like a block of ice as it split down the middle, revealing my heart and leaving me unprotected. I was as afraid as I was excited. It felt like at any moment someone could stick their hands in my armor and pull apart the pieces.

**

Two days later and the days had moved almost exactly the same, sans puppy. We walked all day except to stop for a little bit to eat. And at night we found a nice warm roof to sleep on and drifted to sleep too exhausted to do anything else.

I had known the long walk would be grueling, but walking all day just felt like you were getting nowhere, especially with the railway above your head, going at all hours of the day, just taunting you because you can’t take a ride.

That night we were debating on where to sleep since it had begun to rain. Rainwater was red when it fell from the sky because it was pulled from the Red Sea. It didn’t hurt you to get wet from it, but it was cold and…it was red. Nobody wanted to sleep in cold, red water all night.

We had chosen two buildings and were discussing which building would be better. Both seemed to be abandoned, which meant the owner couldn’t pay their taxes and Congress hadn’t repurposed it yet, but they would. When you were sent for processing, whatever you owned, if anything, now belonged to the government. Including your children…

I closed my eyes to stop my thoughts, focusing on what we were doing, and looked at him. “We’ll just pick the one closest to the street. Wouldn’t that be the safest bet in case we needed to run quickly?”

“It depends on all sorts of things. Here.” He reached back and put his hand into his bag before taking a silver coin from one of the smaller pockets. “I always let fate decide my really big decisions. It makes me feel like someone else had a hand in things since I’ve been taking care of myself for so long. Let fate decide by the flip of the coin. Heads we sleep there, tails we sleep in that monstrosity.”

When I didn’t say anything he flipped the coin and held his hand over it, not looking to see which side had won yet. “Pick. Head or tails?”

“I can’t do that,” I breathed. “I’ve never let silver rule my life and make my decisions before, I’m not going to start now.”

He held up the coin. “This is just a coin, an object. People have turned it into something it isn’t. We make it valuable, worthy. It’s junk until we deem it worth something. Everything is. So you’re not letting silver rule you, you’re letting fate decide, giving it a choice and an option when before it had none, no way to play into this scenario unless it intervened.”

I studied his face. “You really believe in all this stuff, don’t you? Fate?”

“I absolutely believe. It was tails, by the way.” He shrugged with an easy smile. “You win.”

“Just like that, we’re going to sleep in the building I wanted.”

“Just like that,” he replied quietly.

The way he stared at me…

I swallowed, my tongue thick as we walked around to the back of the building. He pulled some gadget from his bag, one of those things he had grabbed from Ivan’s store, and placed it in front of the screen on the door.

“There is at least one good thing about being acquaintances with a bunch of crooks.” He peered over his shoulder at me, throwing me a grin. “I know how to do this.”

Whatever he was doing worked and the door’s protected system unlocked. The door was only a holographic barrier resembling a big black door in the side of the factory, that disappeared when he unlocked it. Holographic doors were usually reserved for posh areas. The rest of us had to use our hands and elbows and, God forbid, fingers to get inside a building.

I followed him silently up several sets of stairs, both of us listening to make sure that we were alone in the building as we went along. We settled in for the night on the top floor. Maxton seemed to be thinking about something just as I was as he looked around and made sure the place was secure. He found a couple rooms and chairs, but with the building being made from concrete and stone, it was pretty cold in there. We couldn’t make a fire or anything. We just had to turn on our built-in warmers on our jackets and hunker down for the night.

Both of us used our toothbrushes that Maxton had purchased and our powdered baking soda toothpaste before I went into the other room to freshen up. I hated it, but it was necessary after we’d been walking for so long. So I took my shirt off and my pants, leaving on my undergarments, and “washed” my body with the harsh lye powdered soap. It burned and made your skin red and a little irritated for a few hours, but you were clean and smelled good. They put something in the soap to cover the lye, which honestly, is a miracle all in itself that they would do that and not just make us go around smelling like it. It smelled like…what I imagined a field of fresh air and flowers would smell like. We didn’t have those here—fields of flowers, but I could imagine.

So that’s what we did. For a little while. But Maxton was restless and paced while he nibbled on his dinner of jerky and cheese. I leaned against a wall and listened to the silence.

“So it was fate for me to be a slave?” I blurted out when we’d been silent for too long.

“No,” he answered so low it sounded almost like a growl. “But it was fate for me to find you.” I sucked in a breath. He walked closer to me. “All the things that led you here, that’s where it starts to get gray. Fate is our decisions, our moves. If we stand still, then there’s nowhere for fate to follow us. There are always good and evil forces at work, Soph,” his whispered. “We just have to decide which one we’re going to give a hand up.”