“Her name…is Hunter.” An uncharacteristic vulnerability softens her voice. This must be what Claire was talking about. Not a hunter, but a woman. A woman named Hunter who is the most beautiful woman Johnny the Bartender has ever seen. Who used to live with Taylor.
“He said you two came here a lot.”
She nods, thoughts clearly miles away. “We did. Hunter likes to dance and the Order does business here.”
“Where is she?”
“Let’s not.” Usually, she’d outright tell me to mind my business, so I’m surprised by her candor. However, I’d like to know more about this person who has seeped so deeply into my otherwise airtight captor.
Matching her intense gaze, I lean in with my forearms on the table. “Why not?”
“Because it’s irrelevant to you.” She knocks back another gulp.
With an impatient sigh, I slide her glass away. “C’mon, Taylor. Give me an inch. We don’t have to be friends since you’re so staunchly against it, but I can’t trust someone I don’t know anything about.”
Her amber eyes storm with so much hurt, the rare display of raw emotion shuts me up in a heartbeat. The door’s been opened, but she hasn’t let me inside yet. We are getting somewhere, though. She jerks her head. “Come with me.”
We exit through a back door into a chilly stairwell and hop up a few flights of stairs, which leaves me out of breath. Taylor uses her shoulder to force open a rusted metal door onto the roof. Not a tall building by any means, but the view is outstanding. Light, both lunar and manmade, shimmers across the black water of the river. Like the eye of a hurricane, there is a strange serenity here on this roof, even knowing we are surrounded by Order activity and simmering social unrest.
Taylor saunters to a concrete barrier and straddles it, swinging one leg over the street. Lacking the same bravery, I sit nearer to the inside and tuck my leg beneath my knee. “Don’t you think you might be too drunk to be sitting so close to the edge?”
Apparently, I issued a challenge I was unaware of, because she pulls her legs beneath her and stands on the edge of the roof, walking backward with her arms outstretched.
“Taylor, sit down.” I pat the space in front of me. “You’re going to open up your wound again and Doctor Lucy’s office hours are officially closed. Please stop.”
“Or what? Will I be scolded to death?” Planting her palms on the ground, she kicks her legs up into a handstand and walks forward on her hands. My heart leaps into my throat as sheteeters back and forth, body swayed by the wind. Finally, she dismounts back to solid ground and plops across from me.
“Can I ask you something?” I can’t let this go, not yet. Taylor squints at my question, but ultimately shrugs and takes another swig of whiskey. “Who’s Selene?”
“Everyone talks too much.” Sighing, she looks down and rubs her thumb back and forth against the rough concrete, like there’s a spot she’s trying to remove. “That is Hunter’s code name.”
“Oh. She was your partner. Like Mason.”
“Yeah. Family, sort of. As much family as this place gets you.”
I’m not sure which place she’s referring to—the Order, or the world.
What constitutes a family? What comes to mind—blood, loyalty—is tainted by my childhood. What does that look like for a woman surrounded by nothing but soldiers?
“Papa’s idea of family is obligation. Family is what you owe. Papa felt I owed him my life, and therefore my life was his to control.”
“Sounds familiar,” she says mildly.
The light of the Piccolo Bridge catches my attention, its glitzy blue and white lights strung like garland across the sky. “She didn’t think like him. My mother…she wanted me to be good, to be myself. She knew I didn’t have a choice in being the region leader, but at least I could be me while doing it. But that’s foolish, isn’t it? Thinking that, somehow, I could make a difference alone.”
“No, it is not foolish. One match burns the forest.” Taylor’s eyes linger on me, but I can’t look back at her. Her words have dredged up memories of my mother and the complex emotions that come up with her. Taylor asks gently, “Do you miss her?”
I snap back angrily, “Of course I do.”
Taylor blinks, clearly surprised. “Sorry.” Her eyes meet mine and she looks like she’s scrutinizing me for something. Or maybeshe’s really drunk and lost her focus. Again, she digs into the concrete with her fingernails. “Theia found me in the forest when I was a newborn, dying, alone.” An inebriated slur creeps into her natural rasp. “So, I do not know much about family. I do not know what it is like to lose a parent.”
“It sucks. I look forward to reliving it when you kill my father.”
Her attention follows mine toward the bridge. There are only two ways to get into New York City by land—the Katherine Piccolo Bridge, and the Hudson Train Tunnel. Every other artery into the island was destroyed, flooded, or left to rot. Coming in by air is uncommon except for rich people or high-ranking Force members, so it’s not as regulated as the bridge or tunnel. A mistake, clearly, as the Order has taken advantage of Papa’s cockiness in assuming no one else could source a copter.
Taylor takes another swig from the bottle. “I mean…I don’t know much about family, but I know about obligation.”
She is trying. I don’t want her to try. I want her to be easy to hate like she should be. Instead, her loneliness pulls me in and I find her enigmatic stoicism alluring. Though the more she pushes me away, the more I want to be closer, I see before me the opportunity to get to know her better.