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Calder smiles and tosses her long red hair like she’s in a fifties movie set and she’s the main pinup girl. Only the fine tremor in her hands betrays that she’s as shaken up as Hudson in her own way. “To channel your inner badass, of course.”
I have no idea what that means, but I glance over at Flint to share a grin. And also because I expect him to have all sorts of questions—that’s the kind of proclamation that usually has him intrigued. But he’s just sitting on his bed, arms wrapped around himself as he stares off into space.
I cross the cell with some vague idea of offering comfort and whisper, “Hey.” I don’t bother to ask if he’s okay. It’s clear he’s very, very far from okay.
But Flint pulls away, wraps his arms even more tightly around himself, and stares anywhere and everywhere but at me. When our gazes do glance off each other’s by sheer luck, I can’t help but notice that the bags under his eyes could take up half the cargo area on a 747.
It’s terrifying, and it makes me wonder exactly what happens in the Chamber if it did this to two of the strongest guys I know. I want to give Flint a hug, want to wrap myself around Hudson and hold him until he can look at me again, but neither of them seems like they want to be touched…or even spoken to.
“Not sure any of our inner badasses are functioning today,” I finally tell Calder as I sink back down onto my bed to wait for Hudson to get out of the shower.
“Well, you’d better find them, cher,” Remy tells me. “Because we’ve only got fifteen minutes before it starts.”
Now I’m getting alarmed. “What’s it?” I ask warily.
“Hex time,” Calder answers. “And unless you want to be thought of as new meat, you and your friends had better pull things together.”
I’ve watched enough prison movies to know what “new meat” means, and the thought has my stomach churning. Not because I don’t think we can take care of ourselves in a situation like this, but because I don’t want to have to be in a situation like this. I don’t want to have to fight anyone, and I sure as hell don’t want to pick a fight with someone. Isn’t having to deal with the Chamber bad enough for Flint and Hudson? Do they really have to beat people down, too? During something called Hex time, of all things?
“What exactly is Hex time?” Flint asks. And though he doesn’t crack a joke like he normally would, at least he’s asking questions. That’s something, right?
“Time in the Hex,” Calder answers…which tells us absolutely nothing.
“And the Hex is…” I give her an I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-saying look.
“It’s the yard,” Remy answers. When I still look at him blankly, he rolls his eyes and continues. “We get two hours a day out of our cells. Most of the time is spent in the Hex, though once you’ve been here a few weeks and earned privileges, you can go to the library and a few other places.”
“How exactly do you earn privileges?” I ask warily.
“By not getting into fights with the people who want to get into fights with you,” Remy tells me like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Except you have to get into fights,” Calder says. “And win. Or they’ll eat you alive.”
“Me?” I squeak, because there’s still a part of me that can’t believe this is happening, That can’t believe I am actually having this conversation right now. In prison.
I mean, yeah, we’ve all seen the movies where they say pick the biggest guy in the prison and show no fear, but I never thought it would be advice that applied to me. It’s all fun and games when Groot picks up the guy by the nose in Guardians of the Galaxy. Here, it seems like a nightmare instead.
“Can we just stay in our rooms? And not go out there at all?” I suggest nervously.
“It’s required,” Calder says as Remy goes to knock on the bathroom door and tell Hudson to shake a leg. “And if you hide in here, it’d be like saying you’re easy pickings anyway.”
Of course it would. “So basically there’s no winning, is what you’re saying?”
“I’m not saying that at all.” Calder fluffs her hair again. “What I’m saying is go out there and be your beautiful, badass self. Walk the Hex like you mean it—and carry a big stick.”
I recognize the Teddy Roosevelt quote but still, I can’t resist responding, “I don’t have a big stick.”
She rolls her eyes. “Sure you do. You’ve got Remy and me. We’re pretty much the biggest stick there is in this place.”
“Speak for yourself,” Remy says in his slowest drawl. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
Calder laughs like he’s said the funniest thing ever, and I can’t help thinking back to what the guards said earlier—about how the last person to get dropped into Remy’s cell was taken out in pieces. Once we met Calder, I kind of figured that was because of her—I mean, that growl was enough to make me tear myself into pieces preemptively, just to avoid whatever she’s got planned for me.
But maybe it’s Remy after all. There is something about him that screams he can handle himself and everyone and everything else that comes along. Kind of like Hudson, now that I think about it. But in a totally different package.
“Okay, then.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Anything else we need to know about how to survive in this place?”
“Don’t take shite from anyone,” Hudson says as he walks out of the bathroom. His hair is still wet, which means it’s down and falling over his forehead. It’s the first time I’ve seen him like this, and despite his tough words, it makes him look…vulnerable. Then again, that could be the look in his eyes. Guarded, distant, vacant.
Despite all that, he still looks sexy as all get out. Of course, this is Hudson Vega we’re talking about. I’m pretty sure the method to take away from his sexiness hasn’t been invented yet.
“Exactly.” Calder grins and bats her eyes. “Hudson gets what I’m saying.”
I glance at Hudson, hoping to catch his eye to share a little smile about how ridiculous—and ridiculously adorable—Calder is. But he’s deliberately not looking at me, so there’s nothing for me to do but share a grin with Remy, who shakes his head in a gotta-love-her kind of way.
I start to say more, but before I can, all the lights in the room turn blue.
“Hex time?” I ask nervously.
“Hex time,” Remy answers, right before the small trapdoor in the floor slides open.
Why Turn the
Other Cheek When
You Can Smack It?
“What do we do first?” Flint asks as we wait for the steepest, narrowest staircase I’ve ever seen to descend at a painfully glacial pace. It’s going so slowly that I’m pretty sure I could rappel down faster, and I am terrible at rock climbing.
“I’ve got some rounds to make—a couple of packages to deliver,” Remy says. “You can come along if you like.”
“Or you can come with me,” Calder says. “I’m way more fun than Remy anyway.”
Remy doesn’t argue, just gives a rueful tilt of his head that seems to say, Yeah she is.
“What are you going to do?” I ask her, because I’m not sure Calder and I have the same definition of “fun.” Like, at all.
Her teeth glisten in the bright lights of our room. “Find a game, of course.”
“A game?” Flint asks, like it’s the last answer he expected.
“We’re going to be at the Pit in a few days,” she explains. “Which means we’re going to need money. Which means…”
“We need to find a game to bet on?” I finish for her.
“Exactly,” she answers.
“What kind of games are we talking about here?” Hudson asks.
“Don’t worry. There’s a game for every appetite,” Calder tells him, looking him up and down like he’s a prize horse…of the stallion variety.
“Lucky us,” he answers, even as he wraps an arm around my shoulders. I’m pretty sure it’s in self-defense—Calder is getting more and more brazen—but that’s okay. I’m more than happy to run a little interference for him.
Plus, I like the way he feels against me. And the way he finally looks at me as I snuggle even closer beneath his arm. Like I’m everything he wants all rolled into one.
And I know—I know—this is a bad idea, playing at being mates when we know how this has to end. But it’s hard to ignore the pull between us now that we’re locked up in such close quarters. Even harder to ignore the way he feels about me when it’s written all over his face…and also harder to ignore my suspicion that I’m falling for him, too. Or worse, that I’ve fallen for him already. And that the idea of giving him up hurts way more than I want it to—way more than I can stand right now.
But what else am I supposed to do? Let Jaxon lose his soul—let him become what he fears most—when I have a chance of preventing it? I can’t do that. More, I won’t do that. But the pain is already there, waiting for me—waiting for us. What will it hurt if, just for a little while, I pretend that Hudson is mine? And let him pretend that I am his?
“About time!” Flint says, and I realize the ladder has hit the ground. “Let’s go.”
“Ready?” Hudson asks me, brow raised.
“Not even a little bit.”