“Wait, wait.” His voice wavers. “How are they treating you?”
His voice is low. I can’t mistake the touch of curiosity. Both our ideas of the aboveground have shifted. He’s likely being treated like shit, and the golden boy of the underground is perplexed.
In a moment of softness, I say, “Belowground wasn’t so bad.”
Josh is quiet. It’s hard for a person whose whole personality is about striving to admit that his pinnacle might not have been worth it.
“Hey, listen, I wonder if you might introduce me around?”
The comm line is so quiet, I think he’s hung up. Of course he needs help. Of course he’s still climbing.
“I know we parted on not-great terms, but I love to see one of our own come up, and I know you’re the same. Rooting for everybody from the Mines,” he repeats the old adage.
Josh is such a sad mistake. I start to tell him so, but Ben lifts my wrist.
“Joshua.” Ben’s voice is cutting. His jaw is tight, and every muscle in his body strains against some unseen force.
“Uh, hello?” Josh says.
“Nice to finally meet one of my wife’s oldest friends,” Ben continues, but there’s nothing friendly in his tone. The words are clipped, his teeth nearly gritted as he forces them out.
“She wasn’t—” Josh starts to explain, but Ben cuts him off.
“Peculiar that we haven’t eaten together. My wife and I should go down to your apartment,” Ben says. The words somehow sound like both a threat and an invitation.
“Uh, s-sure, I—” Josh stammers, probably seeing money signs in his eyes.
“Tonight. Sunset,” Ben insists. Water beads trickle down his stomach. He looks at me again like he won me at a sector fair.
“Um…yeah… Yes, sir,” Josh replies.
“Fawl likes chocolate cake,” Ben adds, and with a flick of his wrist, he ends the call.
His eyes are still amused, but there’s a caution there now, just beneath the surface—a flicker of calculation or maybe doubt.
“Josh is curious about you,” he says. “There is a high probability he will want you back.”
The words settle uncomfortably between us. I laugh, but it’s too fast. I’m trying to beat back the first bloom of anxiety. Because Ben says it like data—like he’s already run the simulation, and the outcome is inevitable.
I hold his hand. “Can you guess the probability I’ll return his curiosity?”
“I can never guess with you. Dice are more reliable,” he says proudly.
“After this business with Josh,” he says, his voice low, “is the Charity Ball wrapping up the end of our fiscal year.”
I stiffen slightly, but his arms tighten around me, his breath hot against my neck.
“I won’t let them harm you,” he continues, “but I want us to have a clean slate. To live here. After you see Josh and tell your family, I have to tell Lily the truth. She may be expecting…that is, I gave her an impression before you and I met that this would be temporary.”
His words ring through me like a struck bell.So, we’re permanent, I think. The realization is a jolt—half joy, half panic. Everything is ending up being so much bigger than it started out.
“Do you think she’ll take it well?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. I don’t want him to hear the unease sneaking up my spine like cold fingers, but it’s there, curling at the base of my neck. I wrap my legs around him in a monkey hug, grounding myself in his warmth, in the solidity of his body.
“She must.” He shrugs, already walking us back toward the beach, his hands holding my ass.
I feel him lengthen and harden beneath me, and it makes something flutter low in my stomach.
But under the heat, under the want, there’s a whisper I can’t shake:The world is bigger than this island.
