“Joke’s on you, I have very little to burn off,” I inform him. “Would it help if I tucked you in?”
“It would help if you finished quickly so I can get to murdering.”
I stop what I’m doing and walk over to him so I’m standing over him. “You adore Rylee, don’t you?”
He stares at me like he’s not planning on answering because he knows where I’m going with this.
“If you adored her so much, why would you risk your life, and in turn, risk hers? I may be wrong, but I believe you might be our best bet at stopping him. If you die, what then? Who protects her then? Fighting isn’t always the only way to get answers.”
“You think I should have a heart-to-heart with him?” Ender asks.
“Oh… no… I was thinking more like…” I eye my concoction. “Things that explode.”
“So you really are making a bomb.”
“I would never,” I say. “Get some sleep. If it’ll help, you can hug my ankle. I shouldn’t have to move too much, but I might drop something on your head, so it’s kind of an ‘at your own risk’ type of situation.”
“I’m not touching you.”
“You slept so soundly when I held you on my back.”
“Because I was in the process ofdying.”
“You squeezed me close and whispered, ‘Mads, I think this might be love.’”
“Are you sure I didn’t say, ‘Mads, I think I might be dying’?”
“You know… it could have been, but I’m sure it was the love one.”
“Finish working and stop fucking around.”
“I’m not fucking around. It needs to simmer for a bit.”
“Simmer? You making fucking soup?”
“Sure. That’s what we’ll call it,” I say. “Soup.”
Ender sighs and keeps watching me for about two more minutes before he just falls asleep. And I’m left to make whatever the fuck I want. I mean… really… would any of them even realize what I was doing?
I smile, pleased with myself.
“Ennnnder,” I call as I stand over him. “It’s time to wake up. That sounds fun, right? I’ve finished making ‘Soup’ and ‘…Antidote.’”
“Hmm…” he grumbles, evidently not impressed with Soup but that’s because he doesn’t realize what Soup does.
“I think we should tell the others we’re done so we can get going,” I say as I drop down to my knees and straddle his waist.
He probably had been planning on ignoring me and continuing to sleep until that point. The second he feels me sit down on him, he opens his eyes and looks up at me.
“I’m also quite tired and have stood for a very long time so I really would love to sit… even if just for a minute,” I say, planting my ass right on his thighs.
“You normally sit on people?”
“I didn’t want to get my trousers dirty by sitting on the floor.”
Ender’s eyebrow arches. Obviously, he’s loving my lie and fully believing it. “Oh yes, I would definitely worry about the pants you got from some stranger and pulled on your bloody and dirty body. What if the outside got as dirty as the inside?”
“You can make the inside real dirty,” I say with a smirk.
