Page 55 of Breaking Point
She reasoned it out carefully.Brice didn’t know she was coming.So the urgent need to rush there as fast as possible was just a product of her own mind.No appointments or timetables existed.
Calm reason didn’t make her nerves stop twitching.
Even when the train halted at the Palatine platform she still couldn’t hurry, because everyone still on the train was heading to the same place she was.She tripped and skipped and wished everyone packed in around her would pick up speed.They plodded up the stairs to the hub itself and onto the taxiboat platform, while others turned and walked down the stairs to the surface of the drum.
This time, Luciana was grateful for the bots that piloted the taxiboats now.They processed everyone’s destination instantly and didn’t sit at the platform trying to figure out the quickest and most efficient route to reach all the drop off points.
She found herself in a taxiboat with five other people, and even though a seat was made available for her, she sat on the edge of it, gripped the low sides of the boat, and tried to peer past the solid mass of the bot at the front.
Her heart was hammering.
The bot dropped three people off first, then alerted her that her stop would be next.It grounded the boat barely three minutes later, on the gravel pad in front of the concrete house with the glass walls.
She was here.
And now her feet felt heavy and her heart weak.What if he refused to speak to her?
What if he had lost interest or found someone else, or hated her now?
The taxiboat lifted away.She barely noticed.She couldn’t stand here forever though.She moved along the path with the soft ferns to the door under the balcony.
Brice wasn’t in the kitchen, where she had most often found him, or on the sofa, where he sat when he wasn’t cooking.
She knocked on the door, wondering if she was knocking loud enough and wishing he had an alert pad like everyone else.
Nothing stirred.Her knocking roused no one.
Luciana rested her heated forehead against the cold glass.Now she was starting to feel foolish.She couldn’t just drop into someone’s life and expect them to be there waiting for her.
She moved back out into the sunlights, along the little path.If Bryce wasn’t here, then she couldn’t even call a taxiboat to go home.She would have to walk to the neighboring house – the Grey house – and ask Danni to call one for her.
“Luciana.”
She spun, her heart leaping and her throat closing over.
Brice stood only a dozen paces away, up to his knees in grass.
Luciana couldn’t think of anything to say.Her gaze fell to the grass stains on his trousers.“What in the stars are you doing?”
He moved over to the path and stepped over the ferns, carefully, the cane working hard.“What are you doing here?”
Luciana’s fear swamped her.She couldn’t bring herself to answer him directly.“I just…I was…Brice, you resigned!”
He nodded.“It was time.Finally.”
“But…tankball!”
He leaned the cane against his leg, brushed off his hands, then picked up the cane once more.“Now I’ll be able to watch the games as a spectator, instead of sitting in the box and worrying about gate revenue.”
Her throat was still closed over and it was difficult to speak.She wanted to jump in with both feet and tell him about everything in her heart and mind, only fear kept her silent.
He was watching her with a touch of wariness.She didn’t blame him for being suspicious.She had walked away without explanation.Refused all communications.
Someone speak!She screamed in her mind.
She was the conversationalist, though.She had just spent two weeks talking to hundreds of people, some of them shyer and more laconic than Brice.She had used all her skills to draw those people out.
And at last, Luciana knew what to say.
