Page 34 of The Hollowed
“Just shut up and kiss me,” she murmured, her tone desperate for something she would not name. Her lips brushed his asshe stared down at him in the near darkness of the room. Her chest pressed against his until she wasn’t sure whose heart was beating faster. “Just….kiss me.”
Cipher did as he was told.
“Do you want to tell me what really happened out there?” Cipher asked softly.
Myra’s immediate instinct was to brush him off, to throw up her usual wall of excuses and send him away the second they were done. She had always told herself that what they did was enough. But things had changed over time, and now she found herself curling against his chest and letting his fingertips lazily swirl around the ends of her hair instead of pushing him out the door.
“There’s not much to tell,” she finally responded, her voice heavy with exhaustion. “We were ambushed, they ran, I kept low until sunrise, and now,” she exhaled a long and bitter breath, “I’m here with you.”
“And…are you okay with that?” he asked, his tone cautious, the way it always was when he tested the edges of her boundaries.
Myra sighed. “Am I disappointed? Sure. But you know how it is. Academy rules. Mission first, people second. That’s the way it’s always been.”
“Maybe for them,” Cipher countered. “But not for me. If it’s ever us out there, I don’t care what the Academy taught us. I wouldn’t leave you behind.” His words carried a conviction that startled her, and before she could deflect, he leaned forward to press a lingering kiss to her temple.
A reluctant laugh slipped from Myra as she rolled onto her stomach to face him. “You already got laid. No need to play the knight in shining armor.”
He shook his head and his expression remained serious. “It’s not about that. I mean it, Myra. You know what you are to me.”
Her chest tightened at the weight in his words. She wanted to shove the feeling aside and make another joke. But instead she leaned forward just enough to brush her lips over his before whispering, “I know.”
Cipher groaned dramatically when Myra finally rolled out of bed and began looking for her clothes. “For a second there, I thought we were actually having a moment.”
Myra smirked as she tugged on her underwear, glancing at him over her shoulder. “We were, and now the moment’s over.”
Cipher tossed his discarded shirt at her, earning a giggle when she let it bounce harmlessly off her arm before slipping into her own t-shirt. “I’m kidding,” she teased, stumbling forward just long enough to steal another kiss. “I just need to check in, let them know I’m back, and stop by to see Jace.” She started to button her pants. “But, Sable’s still out there so if you want, you could crash here while she’s gone.”
Leaning against the wall, Cipher blinked at her, caught off guard. “Like…sleep here? At night?”
“Yeah,” Myra replied with a chuckle, tossing his shirt back towards him. “Unless that’s too official for you—”
“No!” Cipher cut in quickly, his tone just a little too eager. “I’d love that. I’ll be here, I promise.”
Myra couldn’t help but laugh at his seriousness. She smiled as she headed for the door and then paused, her hand on the knob as she glanced back at him. “I’ll see you then.”
Check-in was simple enough, though it never failed to irritate Myra. All it consisted of was updating their barrack supervisor, an ancient, half-broken artificial intelligence unit that couldbarely tell left from right. The machine was so run down that its voice box glitched more often than not, but at the very least, it saved them from chasing down admin officers.
That is, when it wasn’t malfunctioning.
After smacking the damn thing on its head a few times, Myra finally got it to blink awake. She watched the screen flicker on, waited for the confirmation that her return had been logged, and only then did she head toward the elevators.
Her destination was the eleventh floor, where the pediatric patients were housed. The hospital had wards for nearly every condition imaginable. Myra was headed to the Nephrology unit where Jace stayed whenever he was stable enough to be there instead of the PICU.
A sigh of relief escaped her the moment she spotted Jace’s name still written on the plaque outside of room 1107. She knocked gently on the door before slipping inside, finding him propped up in bed as usual.
“Hey, kiddo,” she said, sinking into the small couch beside his hospital bed.
Despite the chaos beyond the walls, Jace was every bit a normal twelve-year-old boy. He played on his gaming console until exhaustion dragged him under, only ever pausing for the schoolwork he begrudgingly tolerated or the procedures the doctors insisted upon.
“I thought you said you’d be gone for a while,” Jace said, pressing pause on the controller before rolling onto his side to look at her.
“There was a change of plans,” Myra said, trying to manage a faint smile. “Besides, I didn’t want to stay away for too long. Figured you’d miss me too much.”
Jace rolled his eyes.
Myra hadn’t known him before the outbreak. She’d just runhead-first into him one night when he was sneaking out of his room after lights out in search of a snack. She should have reported him for doing so but she’d been unable to. He just looked too much like the brother she’d once had. The one she had tried to save by joining the Academy.
In the end, it didn’t matter that they weren’t family. A bond formed quickly between the pair, and now, despite everything, Myra cared for Jace far more fiercely than she’d ever thought herself capable of doing again.