Outcasts (27 page)

He looked down on her face. The curl had come back into her hair, framing her face in tangles of brown and silver, the soft wind making it sway. Her burnt umber eyes stared into his, and he felt himself slip, the quicksand pulling him in. “You told Jemma I was the Owl,” he said before falling completely under her influence.

She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “No, I didn’t.”

“Now you’re going to lie?”

Her eyebrows pinched together. “I’m not. I swear it on the Bible.”

Omar frowned, unsure how much the Bible mattered to Shay. She’d memorized much of it. Could she be telling the truth? Was there some misunderstanding here?

An urge seized him. Kiss her, it said. She could be yours.

Kiss Shay? He inched back, afraid of himself, of how carnal he’d become. “I don’t want to talk to you right now,” he said. “And stop giving me those stupid messages to deliver. I’m done helping you.”

Her eyes swelled with tears, but she said nothing. Just stared at him. Why wouldn’t she fight back? Didn’t she care that he’d insulted her messages?

His posture sagged at her silence. He wanted her to say something. Anything. But she just stood there, staring, fighting back tears, clutching her letters to her chest. He felt terrible and mean. His words had hurt her. He should apologize, say he’d keep delivering her messages anyway, tell her they were good messages. Wise. Hopeful.

Instead he turned and walked away.

Omar vaped his entire PV on the walk back to his apartment and looked forward to taking a short nap before a late night as the Owl. Sleep and a refill were the only things that would help him get his mind off Shay. But when he reached the lobby of the Alexandria, it was so packed with people that he couldn’t even get in the front door.

“What’s going on?” he asked a guy in the doorway.

“Art sale,” the guy said, showing Omar the flyer in his hands.

Exclusive Art by Omar Strong
Make an Offer
Monday, August 9, 8:30 p.m.

The flyer had three images of Omar’s paintings on the bottom. One he’d done of City Hall, one of a forest, and the one of Belbeline’s face.

What in all the lands?

“Here he is!” a familiar female voice sang, and everyone applauded.

Red. She was standing on the stairs inside the lobby, pointing at him.

“I want the painting of the girl,” the guy at the door said. “I’ll pay fifty credits.”

“
Fifty
?” Omar couldn’t believe it. “Do you know how long it took me to paint that?” He wouldn’t sell it, ever, but it was worth at least five hundred credits, in his opinion.

The crowd mobbed Omar, asking about the paintings on the flyer, if they could see his other work, if he did commissions.

“There’s been a mistake!” he yelled. “I’m not having an art sale. You can all go home.”

“I’ll pay a hundred for the painting of the girl,” the guy at the door said. “Final offer.”

“Still no.” Omar squeezed around people, fighting his way across
the lobby. Red smiled as he passed her on the stairs, and all he could think to say was, “Real mature.”

“He’ll be opening the art exhibit momentarily,” Red called to the crowd.

“No, he won’t!” Omar yelled. “You can all leave. There’s nothing for sale!”

The people grumbled and continued to ask him about the paintings. Stupid Red, anyway. It took Omar a half hour to get inside his apartment. He went straight to his bedroom and found a spare vial of grass. He crawled into bed and vaped until he fell asleep.

A knock on the door woke him. He would have ignored it, but he was thirsty. He still felt good from the grass, but it was fading. He got up and walked to his fridge, grabbed a beer, then looked out the peephole in his front door.

Kendall Collin stood alone in the hallway.

He opened the door, and the spicy smell of her perfume reached out and grabbed him. She was wearing a green fitted top and very short shorts. He forced himself to look up from her legs to her face. What would it feel like to kiss her? To touch her hair? He shook the thought away, angry it had come at all. He blamed the grass. “Hay-o, Kendall.”

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “Can I come in?”

The words skyrocketed his pulse and imagination. He had to stop this. Figure out what to do about Shay. This was all Belbeline’s fault. The things they’d done had opened his mind to obsession. He could barely look at a girl without thinking about pairing up.

And while he had fully intended to pursue Kendall when he’d met her the night of Chord’s death, that had changed when he’d learned about Shay. He was going to be a father, whether he — or Jordan or Levi — liked it or not. He had to stop living like a dog.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, trying to act like girls came up to his apartment every day. But his place was a disaster again. He never had time for chores. “Uh, can you wait out here for just a minute? I need to check something.”

Omar closed the door and tossed his beer can. He picked up all the clothes lying on the floor and threw them on his bed, hoping that would keep him from trying to take Kendall in the bedroom. On his way back to the door, he grabbed six different food containers and three beer cans and crammed them into the trash.

Better.

He opened the door, panting slightly. “Come on in.”

Kendall entered. “It smells like paint.”

“That’s because I, uh, I paint.” He gestured toward the kitchen, his makeshift art studio. Kendall walked toward it. He closed the door and followed her, wondering how her legs would look with SimArt patterns up the backs like Belbeline had.

He shook the thought away and focused on the back of her head, but that was no good, either. Omar had always loved painting hair. Kendall’s wasn’t as wild as Belbeline’s or as thick and long as Shay’s, but it was real hair, not that straw-like stuff Red had implanted. It looked soft. It probably was.

Walls, why had he vaped so much grass? He tried to keep his thoughts on track. He thought about his Owl plans for tonight, and then pictured the tiny baby pants Shay had made for Naomi’s boy. But the smell of Kendall’s perfume was like a hook, pulling his eyes back to her again and again.

She had stopped in the kitchen, standing before his easels. One easel had the old Night Owl marquee on it. The other easel held a painting of a little girl’s face.

“Who is this?” Kendall asked.

Omar joined her in the kitchen. “Sophie. She was a girl from Glenrock. Her face has, uh, kind of been haunting me.” Because it was his fault she was dead.

“She has Shaylinn’s eyes,” Kendall said.

Omar studied the painting. He
had
given Sophie Shay’s eyes. Huh. “I guess Shay has been haunting me too.” He removed the canvas and set it, backside out, at the end of a stack of canvasses that were leaning against the wall. He flipped through them. “This one is kind of nice.”
He picked it up and set it on the easel where Sophie had been. It was a landscape of Mount Crested Butte with the sun rising behind it.

“It’s lovely,” Kendall said. “What’s this smoke?”

“Jack’s Peak. It’s a village that used to be up on the mountain. Enforcers destroyed it too.”

Kendall walked over to the stack of canvasses. “May I?”

Omar swiped his hand through his hair. “Sure, I guess.”

She flipped to the next one, a forest scene painted in dark greens and blacks.

“That’s not done yet.” It always made him anxious when people saw his art. Part of his soul was bared in each creation. He felt vulnerable. Red must have known how much it would bother him to have a crowd wanting to look, and that’s why she’d made that flyer. He didn’t understand why she couldn’t just move on.

Kendall flipped to a close-up of a pink flower, then to one of a couple kissing in a street.

“That’s inspired from an Old photograph I had at home. Papa Eli said they were celebrating the end of a world war.”

Kendall turned her wide eyes to his. “The whole world was at war?”

“A long time ago, yes. Before the Great Pandemic.”

The next was a painting of Jemma.

“You like to paint people, don’t you?”

“I like finding each person’s unique beauty, to make others experience something when they look at the painting. It might not be joyful, but it’s real. People need to see beauty in each other and have empathy for how we’re unique. It’s wrong to try to be something we’re not.”

His words stirred something within him. He’d changed. He used to strive to be just like Levi, but that was a hollow dream. He needed to be himself. Maybe he was finally starting to do that.

“I bet you love mimics, don’t you?”

Omar chuckled and looked away. Saying those things had made him feel even more vulnerable. He suddenly wanted Kendall to leave, and she hadn’t even said what she’d come to say yet.

She pulled the painting of Jemma forward to reveal an owl, then a deer, then another painting of Sophie, then … “Belbeline Combs?”

Omar flushed, as well he should. He had painted Bel nude, draped in a green sheet. He’d painted two canvases like that. Otley had taken the one he’d given to Bel.

He tugged at the painting, wanting to hide it, but Kendall hung on. “You know Bel?”

Her eyes studied him, wary now, and let go of the painting. “Not as well as you, I suspect.”

“I thought I’d taken it out.” He set the canvas against the second stack, backside out, relieved to give Bel her privacy from people who didn’t understand. “How do you know her?”

“I had dinner with her once shortly after I’d arrived in the Safe Lands. She and General Otley were together, and Lawten Renzor had invited me.”

Wow. “You had dinner with the task director general, the enforcer general, and Belbeline? That’s mad wild.” But that made sense when he recalled how the Safe Lands had bought Kendall from Wyoming. The vulture would have treated her well until his use for her had run out, same as he had Omar.

Kendall flipped to another painting, one of Zane that showed the side where his ear was missing. “Once I became pregnant, Belbeline was assigned as my mentor in the harem.”

Omar almost choked. “Bel was pregnant?”

“She lost the child when I was about four months in. So she left, and I was on my own.” Kendall flipped to the painting Omar had done of his mom.

Belbeline had been pregnant. Probably every woman in the Safe Lands had been. This place was so strange. And now Shay was pregnant too. But Shay wasn’t infected, and that would keep her babies from dying, right?
Please, God, let her babies live.

Kendall continued to look through Omar’s paintings. He’d done City Hall, the park, Lake Joie, a crowd of people wearing different
colors of Roller Paint, and one of a very pregnant Naomi, about which he said to Kendall, “Don’t tell Jordan. He wouldn’t understand.”

“Some are more realistic than others. Do you have different methods?”

“Well, some aren’t finished. And I do better when someone poses. When I paint from memory, it’s hard to get everything just right, especially the lighting.”

Kendall flipped all the paintings back against the wall and turned to face him. “I need your help.”

Finally. He looked at her, waiting.

“I got a summons from the task director general’s office. It didn’t say why he summoned me. I’ve been ignoring it for weeks. Well, my appointment was for this morning, and I didn’t go. He wants something from me. It’s … his way.”

The task director general was like that with everyone, but Kendall looked terrified.

“What do you mean?”

“Every time I meet with him, he asks me to do something. Usually it’s something I don’t want to do. And something I can’t refuse.”

Sounded about right. “You have no idea what he might be asking now?”

She wrung her hands below her chin, like she was praying hard. “I don’t know. But I want to disappear, like Jemma and Shaylinn.”

Well, she couldn’t live in the cabin. The fact that he thought Kendall was pretty would ruin things with Shay. He’d do something dumb. “I can ask Zane to help with that.”

“And there’s one other thing. I know you’re planning to free your children from the nursery. So I wondered … if you were already going there … Could you get baby Elyot too?”

“Your son.” Walls! Omar had forgotten she had a kid too. “Of course. I mean, once we figure out how. We’re still not sure how to get into the nursery.”

“I can take you, if you let me come along,” Kendall said. “After Lawten changed his mind about letting me hold Elyot — I think he felt
bad — he let me visit the nursery. So I know the layout of the rooms, and I know where it’s located in the MC and everything.”

Levi would be relieved to have someone’s help with the nursery, but would he accept help from Kendall? She’d dined with Otley
and
Renzor. What if she was working for them? He didn’t think she was, but what if? “I’ll tell Levi you’re willing to help.”

“Thank you, Omar.”

She hugged him then. He stiffened and held his breath, trying not to smell her perfume, but her hug lasted so long he had to breathe. Her scent filled him with a longing for physical contact, so he pulled back, putting a few inches of space between them. “Kendall, you don’t want to be friends with me. I’ll just mess it up. I always do.”

“I’d rather decide that for myself.” She grabbed his face and crushed her lips against his. Whoa. He shouldn’t do this, but he gave in to his feelings and walked her backward, slowly, continuing to kiss her, until they reached the sofa. He pushed her down and fell on top. When he kissed her again, she went stiff underneath him.

He moved his weight to his forearms, thinking he’d squished her. “What’s wrong?”

She had her hands against his chest, pushing against him. Her eyes were somehow angry and terrified at the same time. “What are you doing? Why did you …?”

He flushed and sat up on the edge of the couch, Kendall’s feet behind him. “I thought … You don’t want to?”

She shook her head, eyes glazed with tears now. Great. He’d made her cry.

He rubbed his hands over his face. “Sorry, I … I just assumed.” He was an idiot. He wished she’d leave so he wouldn’t feel so stupid.

Kendall sat up as well, on the opposite end of the couch, and pulled her feet up until her knees were to her chest. She hugged them to herself, as if putting as much distance between Omar and her as possible without making it obvious. “I’m not rejecting you, Omar. I just don’t know.”