Page List

Font Size:

I move away from her, afraid of what I’ll do if I stay at her side. “I’ll sort through this pile, you start from the other side and we’ll meet in the middle. You’re looking for a cable with a little silver piece on either side.”

Now that she has a job to do, she gets right to it.

Peaches goes silent while we search through the pile, sifting through old tech, knickknacks, silverware, and all kinds of other random junk. Gideon seems to be quite the hoarder out here on his own private island. For a guy who embraced the new world order to the extreme, he seems obsessed with old world stuff.

“Why did he keep all this junk?” I ask, tossing a scuffed plastic trophy behind me. “I don’t get it.”

“He was poor before the Convergence,” Peaches says. “Lived in a trailer park or somethin’. My mother told me she worked at the grocery store down the street from his house when it all went to hell.”

I frown. “They weren’t together beforehand?”

She shakes her head. “He was obsessed with her, and then he took her out here after they were both Blessed. He even gave her a new name…Obedience.”

I go still, rage coursing through me—but I try not to let her see, not wanting to scare her. “What was her real name?”

Peaches gives me a soft smile. “Georgia. It’s why…sorry, never mind. I’m talking too much.”

“I asked.”

We work in silence for a while, our hands moving automatically through the piles of junk while our thoughts spiral elsewhere. The only sound is the steady hush of rain on thewindows, the occasional creak of the old rig groaning under the weight of the storm.

She’s quiet, but not in the way she was before. It’s a quieter kind of quiet now—exhausted, but open. Like the silence that comes when you’ve finally said something that’s been killing you for years.

We don’t find anything.

After almost an hour, the storm starts to let up and grey light slips through the slats of the windows, soft and silver.

Peaches sits back on her heels, wiping her hands on her thighs.

“No luck,” she sighs. “You?”

“Nope.” I stretch my back, muscles tight and aching. “So…I guess it’s time for Plan B.”

She tilts her head. “What’s that?”

“Boyd,” I say. “They said they’d let him go, so I have to try and talk to him before then.”

Her brow furrows. “And if they don’t let you?”

“Well…fuck, I don’t know.” I shake my head, fingers curling into a loose fist. “But the bottom line is that we have to get out of here. You, me, Boyd if I can swing it. And then…”

I look at her.

“…then I’ll try to release you from the bond. If it’s possible.”

For just a second, her expression shifts—softens, then falters. Like her breath caught in her chest. Like maybe she isn’t sure that’s what she wants after all.

But the moment passes. She blinks, looks away.

“Thank you,” she says, quiet as breath.

And fuck, it wrecks me.

Because I don’t deserve that thanks. Not from her. I’m the reason she’s bleeding. I’m the reason she’s here. I bound her, bit her, collared her—and now I’m offering scraps like I’m some kind of savior.

She doesn’t need a savior.

She needs someone to make it right.