Page 165 of Entangled

The kid looks up at me, then shrugs. “Yeah, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Can we get the next one tonight? You said it’s south, right?”

She looks down at the compass I gave her. The one Ionlygave her because she kept asking me every other minute which way we were fucking going.

“You did a good job,” I mutter. “For a rookie.”

Her excited eyes fly up to me, and I hate that they make me panic, every time. Ryan used to get that look whenever Mom came back in after one of her episodes with an armful of candy she couldn’t afford. His eyes would shine as he ate, and hers would be tight and anxious as she checked the trailer for damage. Damage she never found because I always cleaned up before she got there.

Mom had shit hard enough without worrying about that too.

My family has always been a clusterfuck and a half. I don’t know why this kid has attached itself to me like a baby koala, but if she wants a big brother, she’d be better off clinging onto Lucky.

OrBeau.

Kasey grins at me. “It’s cool. I’ll take your rations as payment.” She saunters south. “You know, since I’m doing your job for you and all.”

Ava laughs and winks as she passes me, then Akira follows. Sloane falls in beside me, and I give her an irritated sideways look.

“Home stretch now,” she muses.

I grunt noncommittally. Maybe the biggest surprise of this trip has been that I don’t actually hate Ava and Sloane. They can handle themselves. They get shit done with minimal fuss, and they talk around me easily—looping me in or not without missing a beat. The only thing they ride my ass about is coddling the tweenybopper’s feelings.

It’s made for a low-key trip, but now Sloane’s wrecking it—giving me those long, you-should-talk-to-me glances.

“I don’t do girl talk,” I tell her, and scowl at how defensive it sounds.

“Jesus fucking Christ, dude.” She scowls back. “Girl talk? Get the fuck out of here with that.”

We walk together for ten more minutes before I start to wonder if I pissed her off.

“If you need to girl talk, you can do it,” I mutter. “But don’t expect me to hug you or anything.”

I only just catch her elbow before it hits my ribs, and she snorts. “Not me, idiot.You.”

I shove her away, but her muscles are solid, and she doesn’t shift far. Her thighs are like steel weights, and I wonder for a moment how much she can lift.

I stalk around her, and she follows.

“You have a plan for how to deal with your pretty librarian when you finally stop running away from home?” she asks, then huffs a sigh when I stiffen. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Not my business—except that you aired your shit in front of everyone, so now you have to deal with people taking sides.”

“What sides?” I snap a branch in front of me with too much force.

“You know, you versus Eden versus this doctor guy,” Sloane scoffs. “I, for one, say fuck the doctor off. Biggest, most fragile egos on the goddamned planet.”

MeversusEden?

My stomach sours at the idea. She’s been fun to tussle with and throw around. She gets this determined little scrunch to her face when she comes after me, and her fists still feel like eggshells cracking against my abs, but there’s nothing cute about her fury. That comes from the cold deep, and it’s easy as hell to see it’s been on a slow burn for a long time. It’s the fury that killed half a camp of men—and Iknowshe didn’t just kill them to get herself free, whatever she told the others.

She killed them for us.

Forme.

Fighting with her feels like shit. She should be chained to my fucking side and happy to be there.

She fits there.

I wonder if thedoctorhas made her scream yet. She comes like a freight train for me. There’s no way he can fuck her better than I can. Girl is primal as shit. Sheneedswhat I give her.

Sloane doesn’t seem to care that I haven’t said anything. She adds casually, “For what it’s worth, any girl who cheats is a piece of shit. I liked her, I did, but if you?—”

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