Page 54 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

I blinked. Maybe I was even shaking a little, too, because I hadn’t felt like this since Max Langer had sauntered into the garden past a herd of ravenous javelinas.

A group of free people—authority figures—my master —were talking to me, not about me.

About choice. About freedom itself . And I didn’t have the first goddamn clue how to respond.

All I knew was that when this was over, fuck. Could I please relax with some bourbon and a good research paper on molecular orbital theory?

In the end, I did the only thing I could think of. I looked at Louisa.

“We’ll—we’ll take care of Maeve,” she said, her voice somehow both shaky and full of conviction, though she must have known that she might be helping kiss goodbye the very thing she’d been hoping for.

“Between me and Erica and Milagros and Ivy, she’ll have the best support system anyone could possibly ask for.

“It’ll be dangerous,” Louisa said. It wasn’t a question.

Wheatley swallowed. He wasn’t fooling anyone. I’d heard stories. I knew what “repurposing” meant. It meant I’d be sent to places where my “skills” could be put to better use. Places I might not come back from.

A tool by another name.

“So what?” My voice was hoarse, like I’d been shouting for hours when I hadn’t said much of anything at all. “I get handed a mission and sent off to do the dirty work nobody else wants to do? Disposable as ever, just with a new uniform?”

Wheatley didn’t deny it. “You’d be given proper training,” he said instead as if that changed anything.

“You’d be protected. I’ll personally ensure you’ll be just another member of the team and treated as free to the extent the law allows.

You’ll live in approved housing owned by us.

You can come and go as you please, within certain limits. ”

Briefly, I gazed down at the chains he’d shed. “So from slavery to jail to a… nicer jail?”

Louisa elbowed me, right in my bad arm—well, my worse arm.

“For how—how long?” I asked Wheatley. My heart was pounding again, and the goddamn room, of course, was utterly silent. I was convinced everyone could hear it.

“Three years.” Wheatley coughed. “But after that, you’re free. Completely and permanently.”

“If he’s still alive,” spoke up Louisa.

He hesitated. “In the interests of complete transparency, some of the missions will be dangerous, and I can’t guarantee his safety. But that’s also part of being on the team. There are no certainties in this job, for any of us.”

“And can he refuse?” Louisa asked, voice barely a whisper.

She had to know that even if I were sold—or if they ever let me leave this detention center, which wasn’t certain—there was a chance, albeit a small one, that we could still see each other.

But with the feds, zero. Hell of a choice, as usual.

“Of course,” said Wheatley. “And so can your father.”

I took one last deep breath. “Lou, look at me. Yeah?” I held her trembling shoulders as best I could as she, bless her soul, tried to focus as best she could. “I won’t do it. If you want me to, I’ll—” I looked frantically at Keith, of all people, though he looked just about as baffled as I felt.

Then, to his shock, he stepped forward and lightly touched my shoulder. “It’s up to you, son,” he said, totally awkwardly and unhelpfully. But kind of nice just the same. “But I… I think it’s a good offer. Better than your other options.”

My other options.

Chains. Muzzles. A number on my wrist. Being sold off to some rich bastard who at best would stick me in the corner of a drafty office taking dictation, at worst would put me in a cage. Forever.

I swallowed hard and turned back to Louisa.

Her face was pale, her lips pressed together so tightly they almost disappeared. But she met my gaze head-on.

“It’s your choice,” she whispered. “But if you take it, I won’t make you wait for me.”

That hit worse than anything else. Worse than the mine, worse than the beatings, worse than the fear I’d lived with my whole life.

“I don’t—” I stopped because I didn’t fucking know .

Did I want this? Did I want anything, now that my one and only mission for the past three years was complete?

“I’ll stay,” I said firmly.

“Goddammit, you stupid fucking idiot, do you still not know me at all?” Louisa growled and actually shoved me. Really. I almost fell. “How the fuck do you think I could possibly ever live with myself if I made you stay in slavery indefinitely for me ?”

Okay, wrong answer. But we’d had this conversation, long ago, on the night the clouds had covered the stars. As if we’d always known that it would somehow come down to this. But why ?

Because, dumb fuck, for the hundredth time, freedom isn’t free. And the world seems determined to teach you that if it kills you.

I swallowed, throat dry, and tried again. “Three years, Lou. No contact. You wouldn’t be free, either, waiting for me. And I would never make you do it.”

She shook her head helplessly. “So—” She never finished. Just melted into my arms, sobbing, tears slowly soaking through the rough fabric of my uniform shirt.

And then I started memorizing. The exact achromatic gray of her eyes, the radius and angle of the Archimedean spirals her curls made as they fell over her shoulder, the acute angle of the curve of her cheekbones, the kinetic energy present when she flushed from the anger and fear and grief of it all.

I chronicled it all like a lab report: the elasticity of her skin in my arms, the weight and volume of her body, the oxygen she consumed when her breath drew in sharply when I kissed her.

And I filed it all away in the same vast archives of my brain that had once been reserved only for theories and equations and formulas and chess openings.

Because it was all that mattered now.

I turned back to Wheatley. “When do we start?”

Her grip faltered.

“Tomorrow,” he replied. “You’ll be transferred to a secure location, and your training will begin immediately.” His voice softened, just slightly. “This is a good deal, man. You’re lucky.”

Lucky. Like the sevens that began the number burned into my arm.

Keith just exhaled, rubbing his temples. “That’s it, then?” he asked Wheatley.

Louisa’s nails dug into my skin, but I barely felt it. And she was barely breathing. “No,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

I turned back to her just in time for her to throw herself against me, her arms around my neck, her whole body pressing in.

"You think if you hold me tight enough, the world won’t tear us apart?" I whispered.

She pulled back just enough to look at me. “I—I’m?—”

“Because when you hold me like that ... it’s enough for me to believe that maybe you could. Enough for me to believe in you, in me, in souls, in God, in anything at all. In other words, woman,” I said, “You just made a miracle.”

The brave little smile she gave was everything. “I love you, you know,” she whispered fiercely. “I love you, I love you, I love you, and I don’t care who hears it.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed the lump in my throat. My arms locked around her on instinct, my face buried in her hair, breathing her in, memorizing every single thing about her because after this, there would be nothing . “I love you, too.”

And over her head, I met my master’s eyes dead-on. Kept them there. So Keith knew what I was asking—no, not asking.

Ordering.

Take care of her.