Chapter 13: Wren

 

 

“Rocky left this morning,” I said, gritting my teeth with every punch I threw at the bag. My arms were tired and shaking but I continued to hit it anyway.

It felt good.

Cathartic.

I needed to hit something and the bag was better than a human.

“Where’d he go?” Reece asked. He was panting as if he’d been running. I hoped that didn’t mean his mission had failed again. He would be inconsolable.

“He’s gone to get through the wall. He’s not coming back.” Reece was silent as he processed the news. “He asked me to go with him. I tried to say goodbye to him but he’d already left.”

“I’m sorry, Wren.”

“It’s not your fault.” I hit the bag again, putting all my hurt and pain into my fists and delivering hard blows. I stopped, exhausted. My arms were little more than cooked spaghetti.

“Are you regretting it now? Not going, I mean,” Reece said.

“No. Here is where I belong, I need to fight back. I’m glad he’s gone though.”

Reece raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”

“It’s safer for him on the outside. He’s not going to be caught up in this rebellion we’ve started. When we tear down the walls I will find him again.” That thought alone was the only thing keeping me sane.

I was going to find Rocky again.

I didn’t need to say goodbye to him, I realized that now. We would see each other once the fight was done, when it was safer in Aria and people could come and go as they pleased.

It was just another reason to fight with everything I had.

Reece and I stared at one another for a long time as the minutes ticked by. It seemed neither of us knew what to say so we said nothing.

Eventually, Reece cracked. “Do you want to do some training? There’s still plenty left to show you.”

I nodded.

We moved to the mat.

We fought.

Every time Reece put me on the floor and told me what I did wrong, I filed the information away to make sure I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. There was rage and fear and hurt and determination fueling me.

I got up every time and we went another round.

My emotions were raw as I wrestled with Reece. The pain of losing Rocky was always just under the surface no matter how hard I tried to push it away.

There was something else there, too.

Reece had never mentioned the single kiss we had shared. He ignored it like it meant nothing to him. It had meant the world to me, which made his ignorance sting so much worse.

I was angry.

Which made me daring.

Stupidly courageous.

The next time I was pushed to the ground, I got up and took a few breaths. “Why did you kiss me?”

Reece froze in place before he started to fiddle with his sleeve. He pulled it down to cover his arm before pushing it back up again. He was looking everywhere except at me.

“I just want to know,” I continued. “Because I can’t figure it out and I think about it a lot.”

“I was caught in the moment,” Reece said quietly, I could barely hear his words. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

Every little piece of my heart shattered into a thousand pieces.

How could I have been so stupid to believe otherwise? Of course Reece hadn’t meant that kiss. It was a charged moment, he had acted in the blink of an eye and made a mistake.

Nobody saw Defectives like that.

They didn’t love us.

They weren’t attracted to us.

We weren’t human.

Abominations. How many times had I been told that over the course of my life?

Too many times to count.

I had let myself get caught up in a fantasy when I should have known better. It was laughable to think otherwise.

As much as I tried to hide my shame and disappointment, my face still flushed with embarrassment. I looked away so he wouldn’t see it in my eyes.

“It’s okay,” I murmured.

“Maybe we should call it a day.”

I nodded my agreement and Reece walked away, heading for the door. I didn’t need to use the punching bag any more. All the fight had left me, it whispered into the air with just a few of Reece’s words.

Tears started to sting my eyes but I quickly wiped them away before they could fall. Crying had never got me anywhere before, there was no point in starting now.

Maybe Stone and I had more in common than I thought.

She didn’t cry either.

Perhaps she had experienced moments like this one, too. Maybe that’s what hardened her to the world. Surely if she actually felt love she wouldn’t be so cold now.

Reece placed his hand on the door and stopped. If he was going to try to console me now I didn’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t have anyone feeling sorry for me, especially about this. It was a misunderstanding, something I should have expected all along. It was so stupid of me to bring it up.

Stupidly courageous.

That was me.

And now I just felt stupid.

Reece turned around and faced me. “I lied.”

We had a whole room between us but it was still difficult to look at him. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, Wren, I lied. It wasn’t a mistake,” he said. All the breath left my lungs, my heart stopped beating deep within my chest. “It was what I had wanted to do since I first met you.”

I couldn’t speak.

There were no words.

“I love you, Wren. But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“So don’t.”

“People are going to talk about us. They’re going to say nasty, horrible things.”

“I don’t care,” I said. I had thought about every single thing that could happen in the rare event of Reece actually having feelings for me. There was nothing he could say that I hadn’t already thought about and analyzed a million times over.

“You’re too precious to get hurt,” Reece said.

My head shook from side to side. “I don’t care. Reece, if I have you then nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter what people think, it’s none of their business. You see me as a person, not as a Defective or a clone. You see me and that is worth everything that comes along with it.”

Reece started running toward me. My feet started running too. We met in the middle of the room as he swept me up into his arms. We spun around and around until I was dizzy.

He placed me back onto the ground, making sure I was steady before letting me go. His hands cupped my face, turning my gaze upwards so I could look into his eyes.

They were beautiful eyes.

Sincere, loving, honest.

I could have drowned in those beautiful green eyes.

He leaned over until his soft lips pressed onto mine. The kiss was so different from the first. Our first was hard and passionate, quick in the moment.

This one was slow and tender, reverent and loving. I never wanted Reece to stop kissing me like that. I wanted to be lost in those kisses forever.

When he released me, his thumb caressed my cheek, so gentle and soft. I could barely believe it was happening and he really had said he had feelings for me.

“I love you so much, Wren,” Reece started. “I’ve wanted this for so long now. You have to pinch me so I know it’s real and not a dream.”

I playfully pinched his belly. “I love you, too. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Absolutely. But it’s not going to be easy.”

“Nothing for me ever is.”

He leaned down until our foreheads were resting on each other. My hand went to Reece’s chest until I could feel his heart beating beneath it.

It beat for me.

He was mine now.

We stood like that for a long time until Reece pulled back. “We should get upstairs, there’s so much I have to tell you. We’re attacking on President’s Day.”

“We’re taking Stone down on her special day? It sounds… poetic.”

“She’ll get what she deserves.”

We twined our fingers together to walk upstairs, Reece talking about his morning missions the whole time. When we reached the top, we let our hands fall free. We might think we were ready for people to know, but maybe we weren’t quite.

Joseph hurried over when he saw us. “Wren, I have been looking for you.”

“Join the club,” I joked. He didn’t get it but Reece did. “What’s going on?”

“I need to speak with you alone.”

“Me?” Why would he want to speak to me alone? I was just about the most useless person in the whole Resistance.

“Yes, you.”

I glanced at Reece who didn’t seem overly impressed with the request. Still, I was curious to know what Joseph had to say to me when nobody else was around. “Okay.”

“Wren—” Reece started before I cut him off.

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him, hoping he read the honesty in my expression. He finally nodded and stepped away while I followed Joseph into his office. He was one of the very few whose office actually had real walls instead of just sheets or tarpaulins.

“Take a seat,” Joseph ordered. I sat opposite him, his desk between us. He had set up his office nearly identical to his office in the bunker. Maybe that was how he found his own peace, making order of his private space.

“What is it?” I asked. I was full of nerves, unable to keep still while being kept in suspense.

“In the next few days I am sending a team in to extract President Stone’s DNA. We will be targeting her in her home as that’s the place she seems to spend more of her time recently.”

I nodded, wondering what it had to do with me. Just the thought of Stone’s mansion gave me the creeps. My time there had not been fun or enjoyable.

Joseph continued. “I understand you spent a considerable amount of time in her mansion.”

“I was in the basement cell.”

“But you did move around her mansion. Did you not?”

“I was running at the time,” I pointed out.

“Still, you are the best resource we have. I want you to sit down with our extraction team and tell them as much as you can about her mansion. The layout, where the guards are usually stationed, the locations of the rooms she is most likely to be in, etcetera. Will you do that for us?”

“Of course. But I want to go with them. I want to be in on the mission.”

“No, that is out of the question.”

“Why? I could really help.” My voice was rising and I didn’t want to get angry with Joseph. I wanted him to agree with me so we could stop arguing.

If anyone deserved to face down Stone and take her DNA, it was me. She had hurt me the most out of anyone. I wanted to look into her eyes and tell her we were going to win in the end.

Even if it meant returning to that mansion.

Even if it meant Stone would want me dead more than ever.

Joseph leaned on the desk, his expression serious. “You are the most wanted person in Aria. If I send you into the home of the woman who wants you dead the most, she will do everything she can to kill you. I can’t have that kind of mess on my hands. I need this mission to be fast and smooth. There is no room for error.”

“You think I would mess up?” Thanks for the vote of confidence, I wanted to say.

“Not on purpose. But we need people that Stone wouldn’t suspect, that is the only way they’ll be able to get close enough to extract a sample of her DNA.”

Realization dawned on me. “You’re planning on having it look like an inside job, aren’t you?”

Joseph nodded slowly. “Yes. We don’t want to tip her off to the fact we know about all the clones in her parliament. If she turns out to be a clone herself, she would run straight to her Maker and tell them what we are doing.”

“And then we wouldn’t have the element of surprise.”

“Precisely, Wren.”

I understood why it was impossible for me to go on the mission.

But I would face Stone one day.

One day soon.