I can’t hold back the laugh that chokes outta my throat. “I’ll try,” Buff says, as if he’s just been given the biggest challenge of anyone.
“Uh, Dazz’s brother,” Skye says.
“Wes,” he reminds her, watching me when he says it.
“Thank you fer tryin’ to help us. When you think of me, I hope you think of someone who tried to pay you back, who tried to fight fer you the same way you fought fer me.”
“I will,” Wes says, tucking his head in his hands. He barely knows her at all, and yet I can tell he feels her, the truth in her. The realness.
“Now git yer rest everyone,” she says and I stop moving, stop fidgeting, just sit there like a stone, waiting. Has she forgotten me? She mentioned me in her speech to Buff, so maybe that was all she had to say. I hang my head, knowing full well I shouldn’t expect more than that considering we’re only a few days from having met each other.
But still—I’d hoped.
Selfishness. That’s what my thoughts are, plain and simple. She’s gonna be hung and I’m worried about whether she’s thinking of me the night before she dies.
But still—I’d hoped. I won’t sleep tonight.
Not one wink.
~~~
I musta fallen asleep because my eyes jerk open suddenly. The wall torches continue to burn, because Big’s probably not conscious enough to put them out. Everything’s quiet, except I know something woke me up.
A stone clatters around my feet, which are sticking out into the middle of my cell, away from my head, which is resting uncomfortably against the wall. I look at the rock, changing color from orange to red to yellow and back to gray as the flames flicker.
Clatter, clatter.
Another stone careens across my cell, skipping all the way to where it rests by my side. I curl my fingers around it, retrace its path to where it musta come from.
The hole in the wall. Skye’s hole.
I slide on over to it, blinking away the sleep I didn’t expect in the first place.
Skye’s looking at me. “Icy Dazz,” she says. My toes curl slightly.
“What’re you doing awake?” I say.
“Hard to sleep on yer last night,” she says. I cringe, wondering how I manage to consistently say stupid things through this hole.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t me—”
“I’m just kiddin’ ya,” Skye says. “Don’t git yer—whaddya call the small clothes you wear under yer other clothes?”
“Skivvies?” I say, like a question.
“Sure. Whatever. Don’t git yer skivvies all in a knot.”
“Skye, I—”
“No,” she says. “It’s my night to do the talkin’. ’Cause if I’m talkin’, I ain’t fallin’ apart, I ain’t losin’ the dignity I found when I left my father behind to join the Wildes. I won’t lose that, not tonight.”
“I’m sorr—”
“What’d I say?” she says, showing me the finger she’s got to her lips.
I don’t say anything. Just wait.
“Better,” she says, sending her eyes through again. “I know we ain’t hardly more’n strangers, but I’ve got feelin’s for you, Dazz, I’ll go right on out and say it, ’cause, after all, what do I have to lose, right?” I nod, feeling a burst of something good in my chest. I don’t say anything because she told me not to.
“I don’t go chasin’ after guys. I don’t got a Circ, like Siena. I’ve never…” Her voice falters for the first time. “Dazz, I’ve never kissed a guy,” she says.
Not what I expected her to say. How could a girl like her not have kissed anyone? She should have fire country guys leaping over each other to get to her. I don’t say anything, because, well, you know why.
“Well, ain’t ya gonna say somethin’?” she says.
I almost chuckle, but I hold it in. “I thought I wasn’t allowed.”
Now she does laugh. “You take my words pretty seriously, don’t you?”
“I do,” I say.
“Why?” she says. “I ain’t smart, the sun goddess knows that as well as anyone. I got things to say, but they’re probably not always the right things.”
I gawk at her brown eyes through the hole. The right things? She’s worried about saying the right things when every time we speak I’m the one bumbling along. “You’re wooloo,” I say, turning her fire country word back on her.
She laughs again. “Ain’t that the truth,” she says. “Did you see how I rode that big fella like a searin’ tugbull?”
“I did,” I laugh. “I was most impressed.”
“Ain’t you wonderin’ why I’ve never kissed nobody?” she asks, changing the subject quicker than a rabbit hopping to his hole when he hears the hoot of an owl.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I say. “But yah, I figured you’d have kissed dozens of guys by now.”
“You callin’ me a shilt?” she says, her tone darkening.
“What? Nay! I mean, I don’t know what that even is. All I meant was that as beautiful as you are I’d think guys would be lining up across fire country for a chance to win you over.”
“Flattery won’t git you far with me,” she says.
“How about honesty?” I say, finally feeling the words flowing the way they’re meant to.
“I wanna kiss you,” she says matter-of-factly, like she’s saying she wants another plate of gruel, or the sky is red, or ice country is cold, or any of a dozen other normal things to say.
“You—you do?”
“Scorch yes, I do, Dazz. Yer smoky, you make me laugh, I ’spect without even tryin’, and you got a good heart.” Be asleep, Buff. Be asleep.
“We should try,” I say, feeling my blood rushing all over the place, waking up my whole body.
“This is a searin’ thick wall,” she says. “And this hole ain’t big enough to git more’n a hand through.” As if to demonstrate, she sticks her fingers through. My confidence is roaring like a just-woken beast, and I feel like the old Dazz, the one who could catch girls’ attention, even if he couldn’t keep them. I grab her hand, kiss it, stars flashing behind my eyelids. Ice this wall! I’ve got the urge to pound my way through it, fist by fist, without regard for my bones breaking.
I give her hand back, look through at her. There’s a wildness in her eyes and I know everything I’m feeling is mutual, and she’s considering pounding away too, meeting me in the middle, in a big old pile of dungeon rubble. “Bars,” I say, but she’s already moving in that direction, gone from sight.
I rush along the wall to the bars, jam my head and arms through, feeling the metal poles cinch around me, stopping me. Her head’s through too, and she’s reaching for me, and our hands are touching, and now our arms—I’ve got one hand in her hair, running through it wildly, and the other on her jaw, cupping it, touching the dark bruise where Big hit her.
I strain against the tightening bars, feeling the dull pressure of the metal as it bruises my ribcage, but keep pushing, getting another inch, Skye doing the same, trying, trying, icin’ trying to—
—meet in the middle where—
—her lips can meet mine, where—
—she can get her first kiss, and me, my first real kiss, her lips closing in, so close I can see the pink tinge on them but then—
—we can’t go any further, and we’re just dangling there, hugging each other awkwardly, wishing we had another inch. Just one more inch.
The dungeon door creaks open.
Chapter Twenny-Five
We stop moving. Stop struggling against the bars.
“What do you think yer doin’?” a familiar voice says.
Can’t be.
Can’t.
I’m dreaming up the whole thing. Skye’s words—I wanna kiss you—weren’t real, at least no realer than my imagination made them.
I pull back, and Skye does too, strain on her face as she wedges back between the bars. I do the same, grunting as the metal tightens, tightens, tightens, and finally releases me. The whole time I’m trying to look past Skye, but I can’t see anything except the top bits of an open door, dark and empty, and then—