Sophie Littlefield - Rebirth

But then Smoke had come and everything else was so broken that she’d loved him almost by accident. When every minute felt like a prelude to death and disaster, she’d allowed herself to steal moments of comfort with him. They were to be only that-stolen moments, meaningless moments, episodes she would pretend to forget in the daylight. Only that hadn’t happened. He had loved her at noon as much as he did at midnight, and having Ruthie back was so joyous and overwhelming that she forgot to keep resisting. She forgot to keep protecting herself, and she’d allowed him to take up the yoke-to care for her, to nurture her, to hold her. Sometimes their lovemaking felt transcendent, as though climax transported her outside herself for splintered moments of divinity. And sometimes, when Smoke held her afterward, it was confusingly like being held by a parent, or by God Himself, someone who would love her forever.

But Smoke did not love her forever. Not enough to stay, anyway. He chose vengeance-ugly, dark, violent-over her. And that was that. Her one failure, her one fall. She’d built that wall back up in record time, and it was twice-strong, twice-high.

Dor watched her carefully, and she knew he was waiting for her to crack. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She was stronger than that, stronger than he knew.

“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” she lied.

Dor blinked, looked uncertain. “Still…”

“Still nothing. You were right to leave her the gun, but you know she’s just going to use it on herself.” Her voice sounded tinny, a cheap and insubstantial version. She made herself face Dor, but she couldn’t stand to look in his eyes. They were cinnamon-flecked in the light, a deep, deep brown; but at night, with only the candle for illumination, they were depthless black, and she didn’t dare risk being absorbed by that unknowable gaze. Instead she focused on his jaw; on the stubble that had appeared before the morning was done, on the hard lines of his bones.

“Cass…”

“It’s all right.” She shrugged. “It’s better, really. Hopefully she’ll do it outside, and that way if some freewalker comes through they won’t have to deal with the mess.”

Dor reached, hesitantly, to put his hand on her shoulder again. It seemed to be his entire repertoire of comforting gestures, and his touch was awkward, heavy. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what? ”

“Act like…like it doesn’t affect you. Like it doesn’t hurt.”

Hot, acid tears instantly welled up in her eyes, and Cass knew that if she blinked they would spill. So she would not blink. She bit down on her lip, hard enough to distract herself. “It doesn’t affect me. How could it affect me? I don’t know her. She’s just some other woman. The difference between her and me is that she got caught. I didn’t. I mean, yeah, it was probably thanks to you…do I need to thank you? Is that what this is about? Do I need to give you credit for the save? Okay, Dor, if it wasn’t for you, I’d be tied to that bed too and she and I would be getting fucked together, fucked until we were used up and I wasn’t anything at all. So, thank you. Seriously.”

Cass was breathing hard, and she suddenly couldn’t stand his touch, his tentativeness. She shoved his hand off her arm but she didn’t move away from him on the couch; she could see his scar, the one that had slowly faded and disappeared under the hair he no longer cut, tracing across his forehead.

“Look, Cass…” Dor sounded almost alarmed, and that pleased Cass. The ravenous angry part of her trembled with excitement; she’d gotten to him. She’d provoked him. “I know you’re upset about Smoke, that you’re feeling-”

She hit him before she realized she was going to, flat hand across his cheek, a resounding slap that took him off guard and probably stung like hell. “You have no idea what I’m feeling,” she snarled, and then she pulled back to hit him again, astonishing herself. The sprite that was her anger danced in ecstasy, sending her heartbeat wild with excitement. She felt the spittle at the corners of her mouth and the blood rushing to her face and the tingle of the slap in her palm.

He caught her wrist, hurting her, his strength a ridiculous overmatch to hers. He held her arm in the air, glaring at her, and she wondered for a moment if he would throw her to the ground. The sprite chortled within her, urging her on. Make him, it cried- make him do it .

“You don’t know who I am-what I have really been,” she said. Spittle landed on him and she didn’t care.

“I know you’ve been through a lot,” Dor said, the flash of anger quickly receding, his features rigid and careful. “I know you’re tired and possibly in a state of post-traumatic stress, and what you need is to-”

“ Fuck what I need,” Cass said. “Fuck you, you have no idea what I need-” You were there, she wanted to scream. You shot him in the head. You saw that poor wreck of a woman. You saw the rings.

Oh, God…the rings.

They’d taken the rings, slipped them from fingers shrunk from hunger, tokens of times unimaginably long ago, of celebrations and promises. They shot the husbands and the wives in the backyard. They put the rings in a bowl. The bowl sat on the table. They smoked and ashed in that bowl. Down the hall the women cried and wished they were dead.

He was close, so close to her, his silver-streaked dark hair falling in his eyes, his expression shocked and hard, angry. Had she made him hate her? The sprite crowed with satisfaction and victory as Cass struggled to free herself from his grasp and he only held on tighter, hurting her, his fingers tight on her wrist, squeezing. With her free hand she pushed him, put her palm to his face and ground against his mouth, his teeth, and he grabbed that hand too and held it just as hard so they were locked in a silent battle. If he let go, she would claw his eyes out, she would tear his skin. She would draw blood and then he would know that he did not know what she felt, that he could never know what she felt.

She climbed on top of him, hooking one leg over his lap so she was straddling him, making him twist her arms painfully.

“What are you doing,” he muttered, but she ignored him, she dug her knees into the sofa on either side of him, she pressed her body against him, ground herself into his lap. “What the hell are you trying to do, Cass-”

She saw the confusion in his eyes and it excited her. She knew that she had provoked him and that meant that she was the stronger one now. She had won. It had been touch-and-go, she had let it go too far-but she’d found his weakness and not given too much of herself.

“Get off of me,” Dor ordered her in a strained voice, trying to hold her wrists back as she ground against him. “This isn’t right. You know this isn’t right.”

But instead she bent down to his face and kissed him hard, her fury hot in her throat, her hair falling in his face, getting caught up in their mouths. He twisted his face away and tried to buck her off; she chewed her hair and it tasted of salt, of sweat, of dirt.

He was stronger than she was, stronger by far but she had the advantage, an advantage formed in devastation and honed by the knowledge that she’d never give herself away again. She’d piled everything on the wall, the detritus of every past hurt, every betrayal, until she had made a barrier of thorns and broken glass and funhouse mirrors, and then she’d mortared it with the few good things she’d ever cared about, because they had to go, too; they had to be burned away. Her few friendships, her moments of tenuous faith, a handful of pretty things she’d collected, all crushed and tossed on the pile. She’d made of herself a spiked and impenetrable thing, and then-in only the last three months, oh God, how had she been so careless, how had it come over her so fast-the wall had fallen away like the knotted rags of a desert wanderer, leaving her naked and vulnerable to the sun that could burn her, could kill her.