The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (28 page)

“We talked about this,” he said and brushed his thumb over the hump of my lips again and then he let it settle on my jaw. “You may be all I have on this planet now, which is a coincidence because it just so happens that I don’t want to be with anyone else.
So, fy melys
, don’t ever be afraid of me.”

“Never,” I whispered back. “I’m not afraid. I’m…” I felt a sob creeping up my throat. I’d never been one for crying and hated that feeling. I turned my face, closing my eyes, and felt him turn me back to face him. 

“Don’t hide from me. I’m right here.”

“I don’t want anyone to see me—”

“I’m not
anyone
anymore.” He swallowed loudly. “Am I?” he said low in his throat.

I realized what he meant and knew what he was saying was true. I shook my head violently in his grasp. “No,” I whispered so quietly it was barely heard.

He took my head in his hands and pressed his forehead to mine, breathing deeply.

“You are the strongest person I know. You are the picture of what a leader should embody. How you’ve been forced to live your life and come out on the other side of it with all the pieces intact is the real miracle here. Soph, you’re an angel, a goddess, and a hero, and that’s just the first three words I could think of to describe you—that’s not even scratching the surface of the truth.” His head lifted slightly, his thumbs making another sweep across my cheeks. “You’re everything bright in this world for me, Soph. When you look away, it’s like someone turned out the lights.”

I couldn’t even gasp; it was stuck in my throat, stuck in my body and in my heart.

He continued in a whisper, “So no more hiding, especially not from me. You can’t get away with it anymore. Your light is too bright.”

How could he really think that? How was it possible to think those things about a slave? I was nobody, I was nothing…

“I can see your wheels spinning in that head.” He leaned down in my space, his lips but a breath away. “No, Soph. Stop doing this. You’re not a slave anymore. You are more than you think you are. And you are your own worst enemy.”

I cupped his head and neck with both hands. “You can’t be real...”

I brought him to me once more. I knew he wouldn’t refuse me, and he did not. In fact, he dove in deep, breathing me in like the very oxygen that was so vital to our lungs. His hands were winding, slowly making their way from my face back down my body, where he used his grip to haul me to him once more.

Even though we’d been here before, it felt all new.
I felt
all new. I gasped into his mouth as he claimed me, or maybe it was I who was claiming him.

He needed both arms to crush me to him, and crush me they did as they wrapped around me—all the way around in long, sweeping caresses as he bent me back and groaned as he felt my leg come up to meet his side. That groan rattled into me and shook my very soul.

He kept leaning me back until I felt the warm granite of the roof at my back as we lay side-by-side. I was a little shocked at his courageous move, to be honest, but Maxton was nothing if not courageous—trying his best to save me by taking a news show hostage, for five minutes, giving up everything, even his morals, for his family to make sure they were safe and happy and, most importantly, could pay their taxes, and the most courageous of all he was stealing my heart which, whether he knew it or not, was a giant feat. I had thought my heart was unstealable, and he made it look so easy, his courageousness leading the way, punching a hole straight through.

“Is this okay, So—”

I pulled him back to me before he could finish his whispered plea. His husky chuckle against my lips and the way his palm found that spot just above my knee and tugged my leg against him once more in record time told me he wasn’t all saint. He was so good at being both, but the rogue was definitely the one who was gripping my thigh as his lips assaulted me in the best way. He moved to my neck slowly, but not before giving me a look. I didn’t know if it was an is-this-ok look or a you-better-hang-on look but they both sufficed because when his lips touched the side of my neck for a kiss…

Just one.

“Ahh.” I had thought it was all in my head, but I heard it come from my lips as he leaned away. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t question it. He didn’t give me a look. He just came back to my lips and we began again, but this time from a new vantage point.

He was completely in control and that hand on my thigh was his own brand of a torture device. I couldn’t keep from sighing into his mouth and groaning as he kissed me and then I realized that our sighs and groans were mingling and that made my blood hum with happiness.

And I learned a few things about Maxton. Every time I took his bottom lip and pulled it, he would grip my thigh harder, pulling me toward him. And every time I ran my hands through the back of his hair and then tugged on the way down, he would make this noise in the back of his throat that made me feel so alive in the bottom of my stomach.

I felt like he was learning me, too, because he was doing all these things and then it was as if he could read my mind. I felt like I was dying in all the right ways as he kissed me on that rooftop. But then I realized it was just because he, too, was paying attention, learning me, wanting to know what made me ache in all the good ways. And that made me fall in love a little, I think. Whether it was with him or the kissing, I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t know males could be this way. I didn’t know it was possible.

He rolled to lean over me a little and I waited. I had waited for him to take this farther, too far, the whole time, but he hadn’t taken it farther than kissing—amazing deep, all-encompassing kissing—but never farther than his warm tugging grip on my thigh. I waited, but “too far” never came. And even now as he leaned over me and kept up the amazing make-out, it still never came.

I laughed a little into our kiss, realizing that this had been his line, his barrier, the whole time.

He leaned back a little, his palm going to the rooftop next to my head. My leg was cold, missing his touch. “Something funny,
melys
?”

I sighed. “Are you ever going to tell me what that means?”

Though the old guy already told me, Maxton didn’t know that.

He smiled beautifully and didn’t slam his mouth back onto mine. No. He eased back into my space. He caressed me in every sense of the word. It didn’t escape my notice how both of us had avoided the question and I doubted it had Maxton’s either.

His tongue came after mine, a dance and a duel. It didn’t just sweep through my mouth to search for me, it claimed everything in its wake. He kissed the corner of my mouth and each lip like it deserved its own attention. He pushed inside, nibbling one second and gliding his tongue through the next.

His hands and his long fingers, the same—his hand found mine and he pressed it flat next to my head, lacing our fingers.

“Look,” we heard from the side, making us stop and snap our gazes to look toward the twins, who were on the other side of a solar panel. Fletch’s glare wasn’t set to stun. No, it was full on. He wanted to commit murder. “I’m all for family togetherness, but could Mommy and Daddy please, for the love of
God
, stop this
heinous pre-coitus of a make-out session so I can get back to my nightmares of this night?”

It was Maxton who snickered first, but mine had been right on the tip of my tongue. We folded into each other, laughing into each other’s neck as we settled on our backs on the roof once more. When his breath hit my skin and his stubble rubbed against my cheek, I took comfort in it and let it soothe me as he pointed and whispered to me about the story of Orion chasing the seven sisters for seven years until Zeus turned them into birds and placed them among the stars. When Orion died, too, the chase was immortalized in the stars forever.

It was amazing to think of all the things that were going on in the stars and constellations above us. I wondered if the stars ever looked down on us and thought the very same thing.

**

“So how far now to your…pod? Community? Hideout?” I asked the twins.

“We’re still a couple days’ walk out now,” Roddy answered, but while he was speaking, my watch began to beep. Everyone stopped because when things beeped on this planet, you paid attention. “What is that?” Roddy hissed and looked around.

“It’s this,” I said and showed them. “But it’s supposed to be off. I wonder why…oh. I asked a question about where something was on the planet. I bet that’s why it came to life.”

“Sugar britches, you’re going to have to start speaking layman terms.”

“The doll is the watch. The watch is the doll. The doll told me to put her chip into the watch because she needed an upgrade, and because she needed the world net.”

The twins and Maxton stared at me like I’d lost all my marbles. “Um…” Fletch said slowly. “So you’re saying…”

“I switched on the doll. She told me she needed me to put her chip into the watch. I did.” I switched the watch on so they could hear it for themselves. “Betsy Ross, say hey to the gang.”

“Hey to the gang. My name is Betsy Ross. I’m named after a female American hero who made the first American flag—”

“Trust me, Betsy, they know all about it. They probably know more about you than you do.”

“I find that doubtful,” Betsy spouted back, making the twins laugh so hard. “Mommy, do you have a destination you would like me to look up for you?”

“Holy crap!” Roddy said and pointed at my wrist, laughing. “The watch thinks it’s still a doll! This is some twisted, horror movie stuff right here. If that watch says ‘Hi, I’m Chucky’ drop it and run for the hills!”

Fletch chanted in the background, “Hi, I’m Chucky. Wanna play?”

“Or to put the lotion on your skin!” Roddy continued.

Fletch chanted again. “It puts the lotion on its skin. It puts the lotion on its skin.”

All the boys laughed so hard.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“You can download things from Earth if you look hard enough, savior. You can just about anything on the black market.”

I remembered Maxton’s friend at the docks talking about downloading Old-World language software. “Okay, whatever, but don’t insult Betsy Ross.”

Roddy laughed harder. “What does she do?”

“Well, so far, nothing. She’s the Around Landu edition, so she knows everything about the planet, but she said my mom gave her some information to give to me later. That only I will know when I’m ready for it, but when I told her I was ready for it now, she said that I wasn’t.” The twins continued to die laughing, leaning against each other. “So, so far, she’s been nothing but a pain that I risked my butt going back to my pod for and she’s done nothing to say ‘thank you’ for it.”

“Dude,” Fletch laughed. “The real Betsy Ross would have at least made you a handmade
Thank You
scarf.”

“For real!” Roddy agreed.

“Look up Zone 18. Then we’ll know exactly how far out we are from home.”

“I only answer to Mommy.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at Maxton as he covered his mouth with his fist, hiding a laugh. “How far away from Zone 18 are we? And would you stop calling me Mommy? Call me Sophelia.”

“At your current walking pace, you are approximately three days and seven hours away from your destination, taking into account sleeping and stops for breaks and food. Is there anything else I can help you with, Sophelia?”

“No!” I groaned. “Shut down, turn yourself off. Do whatever it is you do.”

Roddy began to whine. “This would be so much faster if we could take the hover rail, swipe some hurtle boots, see if we could catch a horsopotomus, jump on a messenger bot’s back. Anything but what we’re doing—”

“I get it, Roddy. And no, we can’t take any public transportation. We’ll get scanned.” Maxton lifted his arm in case the twins were too dense, because…they were sometimes. “You know, scanned? And then we’ll be made—as in caught—and that wouldn’t be good—as in the opposite of bad—right?”

“But, not even—”

His brother jumped in and said, “No, Roddy, not even a bot’s back.”

I smiled at them. They were adorable, whether they knew it or not.

Roddy kicked the ground, scuffing it with his shoes as we walked. Pouting. His brother punched his shoulder.

“Dude, we’re halfway. Why are you so upset about the walk now?”

Roddy looked at him like he was crazy. “Because it’s Saturday!”

Fletch grabbed his head. Maxton and I looked at each other like we were missing something. Then Fletch flicked his eyes over to his brother. “Dude, Mommy would save us some. Come on. Plus, she knows we’re bringing company. The savior!” He smacked his brother’s arm again, but he didn’t seem to mind. “She’ll definitely save us some.”

I didn’t know why this time was different but curiosity ate at me, making me say, “What will she save you?”

They both looked at me and said at the same time. “She’s making Sunday meatballs on Saturday dinner!”

I felt this stab to my gut, a true blow to my insides. Not only did it make me miss my mother so much in my soul and heart and everywhere else that I could feel things, because she didn’t have much to give me but what she had she gave and made with love, but it also served as a reminder that the twins and Maxton both had mothers and families that loved them so much, they spent time and family dinners together with actual food—food that I didn’t even know the names of. What the heck was a meatball? Was it actually a ball of meat? Could it be that simple? It was enough to make my brain hurt, for more than one reason.

And here they all were out here with me where they didn’t belong.

Before I knew it, one wretched tear had escaped the corner of my eye and sat there, just waiting for me to do something about it. For once—just once—I wanted to know what a rolling tear would feel like. And this stupid tear and this moment were even worse.

I loathed that tear and all its meaning. It thought it was setting me free, bringing me closer to something or someone, but it wasn’t. I felt like I was falling so far in that moment and I didn’t know if anyone could catch me.