The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (27 page)

Breakfast didn’t come easy, as the next morning, they were blasting Sophelia’s face all over the monitors once more and this time with a fabricated news story about how she’d robbed a ship owner and killed two of his men before she left with all of the money in the safe, all the silver, a metal detector, five bags of oxygen and gravity pills, all before managing to somehow knock out the owner, and then killed two guards on the way out, with her hundred-and-three-pound frame.

And people actually believed that hot mess of a news story, even with her picture right there next to it showing how small she was. Sometimes I worried about my race as an intelligent, sentient people. I really did.

But before we could move on, Havard’s face came on screen and he was there, being interviewed. Soph gasped and covered her mouth as I watched, unable to look away. I watched as he said that Sophelia had just been part of it, but I was the real parlor trick, because I had been the inside man. He had caught me sneaking out at night to meet her several times, which the reporter confirmed the other slaves under Rivers care said the same of Sophelia. Everyone knows if a slave can escape, they don’t come back. Case in point. If they made it so easy for slaves to run, no one would have them because no one treats them well.

I waited for Sophelia, he said, and when she boarded the ship, we played our parts, acting it all out nicely, and then when the time was right, we robbed him blind and left without a trace.

“I see you’ve got some nasty cuts and bruises there?” the reporter observed, her white hair curled under at the ear, the curled again back toward her shoulders for an overdramatic look. “Did you have a run-in with the convicts?”

They called us convicts.

“Nah,” he brushed off, “I had an auto-door on the ship malfunction on me, that’s all.” Which was a lie. I had hit him with the metal detector.

But the worst part? I watched the man who once told me he’d do anything for me condemn me to an eternity in confinement.

Chapter Thirteen

co·i·tus - sexual intercourse.

Sophelia

I
t was a live interview, and it was still going. Havard going on and on when I finally dragged Maxton away from the screen. So the fact that when we climbed down from the roof to the ground and started our journey west once more, only to the round the corner and run smack into the reporter who was doing the interview?

Kismet?

Fate?

Justice?

Maxton must have thought so, too. We saw them wrapping up, Havard smiling big and proud before he turned and let his hurdle boots take him in the other direction, fast. Before I could stop Maxton he was taking my hand and charging over to the reporter. Roddy and Fletch grabbed my arm to stop him, but he looked back at them.

“Let her go,” he said low and dangerously. “She needs this.” His eyes met mine. “And she’s not afraid.”

God… I actually found myself praying. I was being one of those people who had no use for God unless I needed something. I squeezed my eyes shut for two seconds.

“No, I’m not.”

Roddy was first to let go. “We’re coming, too. Truth be told, I’ve always wanted to be on television.”

“Being on the news as a criminal isn’t the same thing, Rodster,” his brother hissed behind us.

“I’m not a criminal!” he hissed back. “Oh, you mean these two. Yeah.” He clucked his tongue. “I have a feeling things are about to get awk-ward,” he sang.

I tried not to listen to them and really, it was pretty easy with Maxton’s hand in mine. Every couple steps he would squeeze it and then rub his middle finger up and down the back of my hand.

When she saw us coming, she packed up the rest of her gear, which wasn’t much. Her camera was on her glasses and she had a handheld in the crook of her arm, pressed to her chest. She was wearing all white, which I thought was also ridiculous on this dirty, red and gray planet.

“We saw your broadcast,” Maxton told her as we came to a stop. I looked to see if there was anyone around. “We might be able to help you. We saw the redhead.”

“Did you now?” she asked, all business and ready to do anything for information. “Are we negotiating or forking over the information?” When Maxton stayed silent she sighed with a smile. “You want to be on the screens, don’t you, stud? All right. But you better have some good information.”

He went to her side as she got everything back out and ready to go. As soon as she put the glasses back on her face, Maxton got behind her and stuck something against her back. She gasped.

“Wait,” he barked. He looked at me and my wide, questioning eyes. “Take off the face scrambler.”

What was he doing? He wanted everyone to see me? He wanted…everyone to see me, I realized.

I gulped once, putting on my brave face, and pressed the button near my collar bone that released the face shield’s screen. When she saw it was me, she gasped. “Oh, please don’t kill me!”

“Turn on your camera,” he said gruffly near her head, but he wasn’t hurting her, though she was making out like she was being beaten with a sock full of rocks.

She whimpered louder as her shaky hand pressed the button on her glasses. He whispered something in her ear and she stopped whimpering as she began, “Um…” her voice shook, making it obvious to anyone watching that something was wrong, but it didn’t matter because my face was on the screen, “did you murder those men on the ship, at the docks?”

I shook my head. “No. I haven’t murdered anyone.”

“Did you steal silver and—”

“No,” I said harder, knowing exactly what Maxton was doing and why he had done this. I could have kissed him right there. “No. I was a slave because of taxes. I ran. I thought ten years was long enough to pay my debt. I stowed away on a ship and…” I met Maxton’s eyes. His jaw was clenched, his eyes squeezed shut for a second as he remembered the same thing I did. “No,
I
didn’t steal anything from Havard. In fact, he was about to steal something from me; the only thing I have left that’s mine, the only thing I’ve managed to keep safe.”

The reporter gasped, covering her mouth. For the first time, probably ever, I saw sympathy from someone in a higher rank than me. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I felt like I was on trial and this may be the only time I’d ever get to state my plea.

“Havard tried to stop me and one of his crew members from leaving. They struggled. That’s all. Just for helping me, they took all of his silver, all his savings that he had to pay their taxes, to try to save his family who’s been through enough.” I found myself fighting tears and was surprised to find myself even more worked up about Maxton’s struggle and heartbreak than my own. “We all have. If that’s what I’m guilty of, then so be it.”

Maxton told her something else and she panned the camera down my body and back up. “You’re a small thing, Sophelia,” she observed. “Though it’s what was reported previously, I have a hard time believing you carried five heavy bags of anything, let alone killed two men. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Did you have help?”

“All of those men were alive when we left. They hadn’t done anything to me. They were just doing their job.”

“How did—”

Maxton snatched the glasses off her head and turned them off. “Time to go.” He tossed them back to her. “Nice stalling tactic, by the way.”

“I wasn’t. I actually really just want to talk to—”

Maxton grabbed my hand just as I was reaching for his, and the four of us bolted for the first shadows we could find. And we kept running, knowing the Militia would be crawling over that area in minutes, looking for us.

We ran, keeping to the back of the buildings.

Roddy was breathing heavy as we stopped for a moment to take in where we were and where we needed to run next. He looked at me and then at Maxton with a scowl. “You’re nuts, man! Like…pistachios!”

Maxton sighed but didn’t say a word. Maybe he agreed with him, but he put his arm around my back and led me along the way to the alley.

I’d never been to this part of the planet before. The only differences about it were the red specks in the granite. It made it seem like you were walking on rubies when the moon hit it just right.

We could hear the music begin to play over the loud speakers in the distance. It sounded even eerier this far off.

Mostly the only people we saw were shop owners closing up. They didn’t say anything to us so we returned the favor. When curfew hit, things got dicey. Should we keep to the shadows and carry on or bunker down for the night and hope they don’t catch up to us?

We barely had any supplies left, so in the morning we had to go into the shops, no matter what.

The twin’s whining won out and we stopped. Plus, Maxton said it drew too much attention for people to be out after curfew. So we climbed yet another ladder to the roof and settled in near the solar panels, tying off our bags on the hooks we found.

So we once again found ourselves lying on a roof. I thought the twins would beg me to read to them again, but they conked out faster than expected. All the excitement of the day was too much for Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. I wondered briefly if they’d ever been chased by the Militia before.

But then I felt a warm palm touch my ankle. I looked down at Maxton’s head near my feet. We seemed to have adopted this style, this routine, this…barrier. It worked for us.

“Soph,” he whispered, only the moonlight to show me the look on his face. He looked thoughtful. He looked upset, his brows drawn together, his lips tight. I sat up and he did the same, so our bent knees were almost overlapping each other we were so close. “What I did today, I wasn’t trying to—”

No. He was misinterpreting today
all
wrong.

I grabbed his collar with both hands and yanked him to me. Our mouths slammed against each other, making me remember our last kiss and how I felt like I would float off the planet if it wasn’t for him holding me to the ground. I had wondered if first, second, and third kisses would be the same or all different. Do kisses die out like a glowing ember that was once a roaring fire? Does our passion do the same? Every time we kiss someone, do we become a little bit more in love or fall a little bit more into complacency? I didn’t know the answer to those questions; all I could say was that for this, right now, and this boy—he was a roaring fire and there would be no complacency.

His sure, confident palm settled on my lower back and he pulled me closer to him gently. He turned his head so he could go a little deeper and I found myself shivering in his arms at the way his touch and tongue and gentleness seared through me in ways that I’d never known I
could
be seared.

And then I realized I wasn’t the only one. He sighed against my lips and I understood he was glad. He thought I was angry at him for the reporter, that I would be upset about what he’d done and think it was a stunt instead of the amazing thing it was. He had shown the world that everything Havard was saying about me was absolute zelephant dung. He risked himself just to save me, just to make the world see the truth. I pulled away from those amazing lips and looked up at him, my fingers still gripping his collar.

“How could you think I would be upset about today? What you did for me—”

“I threw you in front of the world’s eye with no warning.”

“You saved me.”

I sat up on my knees and he came up with me.

“They’re still going to condemn you,” he said as if that statement caused him agony, tugging me against him with his hands on the backs on my hips. I’d never been touched in this way before so it was
so
intoxicating, like a drug, like what I imagined a drug would feel like. I felt my eyes begin to flutter a little, like the beginnings of sleep claiming me, but I was far from being sleepy. I was heavy, like a blanket of heat and happy had settled over me.

He groaned—a sound that I knew I would dream about—and pressed his face into my neck, crushing me to him. “For the love of God, Soph. You have to stop.”

“Stop?” I questioned. If he asked me my full name right now I wasn’t sure I could give him the right answer. Feeling his breaths against my neck wasn’t helping the situation.

“That look on your face will star in my dreams for the rest of my life.”

I gasped, barely. Hadn’t I just thought that? He sat up, his eyes going straight to my lips. One of his hands relinquished me, his thumb coming up to trace my bottom lip. His hand cupped my chin as his thumb made a slow path from left to right and back again. I felt my eyes closing completely and my breath going mental.

“There’s that face again,” he whispered, making my eyes snap open. “You’ve been sent here to assassinate me. Kill me where I stand. That’s it, isn’t it?”

I tugged him closer, his eyes going a little wider no matter how in control he tried to pretend he was. That one hand that was on my hip tightened, and I almost lost my mind.

“Yes,” I whispered back. “I’ve been sent here to assassinate you.”

His breathing was just as ragged as mine, no matter how cool he tried to play it. “Mission accomplished, Soph.”

“How could you think that I would assume you were doing the less than honorable thing today?” I whispered close to his cheek. I felt like I had to keep whispering, keep the game going.

“I just…” he tried in a whisper, shaking his head. He wouldn’t even look at me. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Be what you need me to be.” His eyes finally met mine and I jolted back from the voltage in that gaze, but his arm held me to him tightly, not letting me get away. There was a tempest brewing in his eyes that I wasn’t sure I would survive if I stayed in his gaze too long. But he told me with his sure hold that I could trust him and not to run before he’d given me a chance to show me what it was like to ride out the storm.

He let his hand on my hip go a little higher, pulling me into his chest and hips. We touched everywhere. I’d never been touched by another human being everywhere. It was…erotically, innocently the best thing that I had ever experienced. Fact or fiction, past or present, this kiss rewrote history.