Campbell (46 page)

Glancing down at his fly, Lucy cracked her knuckles. “I could torture you, force you to give it up. I did castrate my grandfather.”

“At the tender age of ten with a steak knife,” Connor said, shaking his head unfazed. “I’m not telling you.”

“Do you think that’ll keep you alive?”

Chuckling, the small man leaned as close to Lucy as he could get. “I just don’t want to give you the satisfaction, you dyke bitch. You may have been able to convince Tal of whatever you convinced him of, but I could give a rat’s ass about helping you get closure. Here’s some closure for you. I didn’t even kidnap him. He wanted to come with me. He wanted to get away from you!”

Lucy wasn’t sure if he was lying about her twin, but for her own sanity, she decided to tell herself he was. His eyes were dark, hard, as he looked at her in the sunshine. There, sitting by the nicest pool she’d ever seen, on a beautiful sunny day, Lucy Campbell figured out Connor Wilde. He was afraid to grow up; afraid of what would happen in a world where everyone else was changing.
 

Cole had been right. He was afraid of being left behind.

Lucy stood, locked the pump door, and went inside. Leah was painting her nails a vibrant shade of green at the kitchen table.

“Why aren’t you back at work?” she asked, sitting beside her.
 

“I’m stuck watching your prisoner.” She raised her eyebrows as Lucy sat across from her. “And the movie thing is kind of on hold until some stuff gets straightened out.”

“Like a new government?”

She shook her head. “Just some high level transition stuff to start. Reporting structures. We need to do the movies for revenue. That’ll start up again soon. They’re doing some closing shots for a few things today.”

“I’m going home tomorrow.” Lucy raised her eyebrows.

“Good,” Leah replied evenly. “Let things get back to normal around here. A new normal.”

“Is he mad at you?”

She shrugged. “About your brother? I don’t think so. He hasn’t mentioned it, but he’s got a lot on his mind right now. I think getting to this point was probably the easy part.”

“I should see him—”
 

“He’s in his office,” she nodded down the hall. “I guess I probably should have told you that in case you decided to spill your guts about anything.”

“I’d never spill my guts to you,” Lucy replied snidely as she stood and slowly started down the hall. Her face grew hot as she approached Tal’s office. She had a lot to say to him, but wasn’t sure how to make the words come out right, in a way that explained anything, or would make it easy for her to leave.
 

He was sitting behind his desk, laptop open when she walked in.

“You weren’t going to come out and say goodbye?”

He gave a half shrug and closed his laptop. “I don’t really know what to say to you.”

She took a seat on the couch in his office, her hands folded tightly in her lap. “I’m going—”
 

“Tomorrow,” he nodded, “I heard. I’ll be in touch with logistical information once you’re back—”

“Of course,” she muttered. “I can’t let Andrew continue on with the war against East like he is. We need a better plan than blowing up the shit out of everything because we’re angry.”

“That isn’t the best plan,” Tal agreed. “I’m meeting with Vegas next week to come up with some terms for a ceasefire and an arrangement for peace. They’re willing to talk.”

“Good,” Lucy nodded. “Listen, I know I said a lot of things….”

“And you had all the right in the world to say them.” He looked at her sadly. “And I can’t say anything but I wish things had been different.”

“You could say you’re sorry.”

Tal shook his head. “I’m not sorry. If I said I was sorry, it would undermine everything that’s happened, everything that needed to happen over the last few months and I won’t do that. We don’t get to choose our lynchpins.”
 

Lucy sighed, on the fence about his logic. “I’m not going to kill him. I want him to live to see everything that’s going to happen. You’re going to be responsible for him.”

“I’m going to be responsible for him?” Tal raised his eyebrows. “That’s what you’ve decided?”

“Since you weren’t before.” She twisted her mother’s wedding band on her thumb. “You will be now.”

Tal cradled his head in his hands, his brows knit together. “I guess I’ll have to find a place for him. He can’t stay here.”

“He took advantage of Leah. You’re fucking right he can’t stay here.”
 

“That’s your interpretation now?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “It is.” She pulled her map out of her back pocket and pointed to one of the islands off the coast that had once been a military stronghold. She’d spent some time the night before asking Rika about the geography of the area for her own knowledge. “You’re going to send him to one of the islands off the coast. I don’t care which one. Not Catalina. Rika said it’s gorgeous there.”

“Does Rika know you’re not going to kill him?”

Lucy shook her head. “No, but she said he was mine to do what I wanted to with. She’ll understand.”

***

Tal looked at her map as she spread it across his desk. He avoided her eyes because he knew he’d be unable to stop himself from saying all the things he wanted to say if the right moment presented itself. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to tell her that he’d never be complacent, that he’d learned much at her expense. Their dynamic had changed though, and he knew revealing those things to her would put him in a position that he didn’t want to be in beyond the next few hours. He had a lot to figure out, and although she said she didn’t have any interest in more power, he knew she’d be unable to help herself from meddling if she was given the opportunity, and Tal wanted a shot at doing it on his own. He knew that regardless of anything he said, she was going to leave and return to her position and Campbell, and he was going to remain where he was and define his, and they’d have to work together. It was better if they didn’t contaminate that with any more feelings.
 

Tal picked the furthest place from himself that he could—Connor was driving him nuts chained up in the back yard. The last thing he wanted was to put him somewhere he’d have to have regular contact with him. “We’ll send him to San Clemente. There’s an old military base there, and we’ll rig something up.”

“I want you to keep him healthy, and I want him to have a television on with the news all the time.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll do that.”

Lucy folded up her map. “And then we have a lot of work to do, Bauman. We’ve got to fix this shit with East. A lot is riding on you. I’m going to need your help.”

“And if I fuck up?” he half joked.

“You won’t,” she said simply, grinning the most genuine smile she’d mustered in weeks. “Because I’ll be watching, and I know you’d never give me the satisfaction.”

He watched her walk out the front door a few minutes later, purposeful in her stride as she climbed on the bike, and although everything was up in the air, he knew one thing for certain.

It wasn’t the end.
 

About The Author

Though born in Nova Scotia, C.S. Starr lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband of few years, but partner of many, a fluffy white dog named Sushi, and a diabolical cat named Kimchi. When not writing, she spends her days meeting interesting people and talking about books across Canada and trying to convince herself she is really and truly a runner.

This is her first (published) novel.
 

She blogs here:
csstarrwrites.com

You can find her on twitter here: @cs_writes
 

UNEDITED PROOF

Here’s a sneak peek from
West
, Book Two in the Campbell Trilogy:

Chapter 2

March 2013

Campbell

“I can’t forget, but I’ll forgive you, eventually,” Lucy whispered into the phone. “I…I know you didn’t know.”

Tal paused. “Come see me, Ce. Or we can meet somewhere in the middle.”

Lucy exhaled and cradled the phone carefully, imagining what it would be like to see him across a room, a field, anything. She pushed the thought out of her mind. “I can’t. I can’t leave or my brother…I don’t know what he’d do. He’s not right.”

“So that’s it? You’re never going to leave?” he asked. “Is that what you want? To be chained to your job? Your war? Your house in the middle of nowhere?”

“I want a lot of things I’ll never have.” She wiped an errant tear away and looked at the tattered map in front of her, drawing an invisible line between Campbell and Los Angeles with her finger. There, he was only inches away, but West may as well been on a different sheet of paper thumbtacked to the wall in the barn.
 

“You never know unless you try,” he replied quietly. “I think about us out there a lot. Even though we had nothing—”

“I’m not good for you. I don’t know what I want, and I’m…I’m a fucking mess, Tal. You know that.”

“I feel like you’re…we’re something that’s supposed to be. I can’t explain it.”

She hated when he said things like that because they were exactly what she wanted to hear. “And what happens when it all goes to shit? Then what?”

“Then we go to shit and then dig ourselves out. That’s all anyone can do. You sound more miserable every time I call. Is staying there really a better solution, since your hands are tied with East? Come down. We’ll at least talk in person.”

His tone was gentle; soothing. She hoped he had more to say just so she could listen for a while, and drown in his words and escape her situation; her rudimentary war, her progressively shitty relationship. There was nothing beyond the words, she knew, since she didn’t know what they could possibly be in breath and form, because she was terrified to give it a real shot.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever had someone like you in my life.”

“Same,” he murmured. “Come see me, and we’ll vanish for a little while. Drive down the coast together. Make them come find us again and blame it on some unknown. We’ll get lost and find each other out there.”

She smiled at the thought, even though it was impractical. “It’s a nice idea—”

“Lucy?” Zoey rasped, pushing the door to her office open, rubbing her eyes groggily in her housecoat. “It’s three in the morning.”

The expression on Zoey’s face confirmed what Lucy had assumed for the last month or so; she knew exactly who her late night calls were to, and she was not impressed. Even if Lucy wasn’t ready to openly admit her feelings for the president of West, Zoey saw them all over her face, and she made little effort to hide them, in the selfish hope that she’d force her to make a decision so it wasn’t on her.

“I’ll be up in a few,” Lucy muttered back, feeling both guilty and annoyed at her intrusion.
 

“Whatever,” she grumbled, slamming the door behind her.

“I have to go,” she whispered sadly to Tal. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“High noon,” Tal said wistfully. “Oil prices are on the agenda.”

“Great,” she sighed. “I wish I could, you know.”

“Then do,” he whispered. “Why can’t you? I mean it.”

“Good night,” she replied, her voice wavering and her heart heavy. She trudged up the stairs and found Zoey sitting cross-legged on her bed, furious.
 

“I haven’t with anyone but you. Not since you came back. We talked about this and agreed we’d try—”

Lucy’s grey eyes bore into her girlfriend’s, challenging her to just ask her so she’d have to admit it. “I haven’t seen Tal in months, and I haven’t with anyone—”

“What you’re doing with him? Planning to fucking run away? I hear the way you talk to him. What you’re doing is worse than anything I ever did. You’re involved with him and it’s not sex. It’s more than sex.”

“I am not. It’s not,” Lucy insisted, although she knew it was.

“Then why are you trying to keep it a secret?”

“Why are you looking for problems when there aren’t any? You’re making shit up to fight about.” Lucy felt like an asshole pushing it back on her, but she was at a bit of a loss to explain the goals and aims of her late night phone calls with Tal. She didn’t know what she wanted; there was no way she was going to be able to explain it to Zoey.
 

“You are secretly calling a boy that you had a brief relationship with. The only boy you’ve ever had a relationship with. You are pretending it’s nothing. I’m not looking for problems. You’re avoiding them. If you don’t want to do this,” she gestured between them and tugged at her ponytail like she did when she was anxious. “Then we won’t do this. Go. Just go. Do it. See if it’s what you want. You’ll know. You’re being an asshole to me, and probably him too.”

“I don’t know what I want from him,” Lucy exhaled, sitting down cross-legged on the bed. “I don’t know. It’s a lot to think about, and it’s not just about me and him. It goes so far beyond us that I can’t even wrap my head around it.”

Zoey relaxed slightly. “There. That’s all I wanted.”

She cocked her head at her curiously. “For me to admit that I don’t know?”

“For you to be honest with me.” Her blue eyes glistened, and she blinked back tears. “If you want to be with him, you should—”

“I don’t know if that’s what I want,” she replied quickly. “It’s just…it’s nice talking to him.”

What Lucy didn’t tell Zoey was that it was nice not to be the dominant partner in their conversations. It was nice for her not to have all the answers like she’d had to for so long. She didn’t tell her how intoxicating it was to have someone covet her for the reasons he did, especially since, with the war, there wasn’t a great imbalance of power between their territories. It also was nice having someone that knew her apart from Cole. She knew telling Zoey those things would not only feel like self-betrayal because she was possessive of her emotions when it came to Tal, but that it would ultimately result in Zoey trying to alter herself to meet Lucy’s ever-changing wants, needs, and desires. She didn’t know what she wanted, but she knew it wasn’t that.
 

“Maybe we could both…or you could.”