POSSESSION, Book 1 in the Possession Trilogy

Chapter 7

7.

I hadn’t pegged him for a crier. His eyes were always so bright, so full of life, like he lived for trouble.

Ty had been that way too, except she lived for the water, the adventure of being herself—of finding herself. The day the black-hearted men came to take her, my mother tried to stop them. But a single taser blast caused her to sleep the rest of the week away. She missed my birthday and everything. Not that she would’ve done anything to celebrate, but still.

I’d hugged Ty and she’d wiped my tears, promising to visit. She whispered that she’d see me again, and hey, we’d walk around the lake and laugh at how we cried like babies when she left. She only came home once. Then the dark-skinned government guy told us she’d died working on a new piece of tech that backfired.

After that, he’d had to use his submission tactics on me, or I might have killed him. That’s when the real trouble had started.

As I watched Jag’s shoulders heave, I felt the same mix of anger and grief as when Ty left. Finally, I knelt on the bed and placed my hand on his back. I patted awkwardly, hoping that’s protocol for when someone is sobbing their eyes out.

“Hey.” Pat, pat. “It’s okay. We’ll bust out of here before they tag us.” Pat, pat, pat. I felt lame.

He pushed himself up and wiped his hand across his face. He avoided looking directly at me. “Do you really think you can get us out of here?”

Of course I couldn’t. Didn’t he remember my last pathetic attempt? I hadn’t even made it out of the bathroom. But his lovely eyes, not so cold anymore, the perfectly curved arch of his mouth…

I’d tell him whatever it took to make him stop crying. “Sure,” I lied. “We’ll go tonight.”

He threw his arms around me and pulled me down onto the bed with him. His laugh filled my soul, and I wanted nothing more than to feel that sound reverberating in his chest. So I laid my cheek against his breastbone as the last echo faded away. Startled by his embrace as well as my own actions, I withdrew quickly and lay on the floor, refusing to meet his eyes.

I warned you not to touch him.

I jerked at the sound of the voice, hitting my elbow on the wall behind me. Once again, I was in direct opposition of the rules. Because I craved the human touch. I always had. I shook away my traitorous thoughts.

“Sorry,” Jag said, his fingers trailing along my shoulder. “Didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“It’s okay. I—I don’t know.”

“Do I scare you?” He leaned over the side of the bed.

“’Course not.”

He smiled, making my heart skip a beat. “Nice.” He said that a lot. It was like his shrugging thing.

“How come you’ve been here for six weeks?”

“Rehab,” he said. “They tried transmissions, but I wouldn’t wear the comm. So they tried counseling with one of your Goodie mind doctors. That didn’t really work either. They don’t want me to be here, but they thought it might be better than letting me go back to the Badlands. I didn’t think they’d send me to Freedom.”

“Where is Freedom?”

“Back east. Vi,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “we can’t go there. We’ll never come out. Thane…well, we just can’t go there.”

I waited for more of an explanation, but he clammed up.

“Because we’re Free Thinkers,” I said, as if stating a fact. Baldie had called me that at the first trial. That’s why Jag and I were in the same cell, and why I felt such a strong connection to him. “Why won’t we survive in Freedom?”