The Last Uprising (Defectors Trilogy) (38 page)

“So she
lied
?” Greyson asked when I had finished. His voice was muffled and watery, and I knew he was crying.

“No,” I said honestly. “I really don’t think she was lying at all. We could have easily killed Aryus the second we walked through the door. He wasn’t armed.

“I think she realized she had been betrayed but had nowhere else to go. She couldn’t trust the rebels, the PMC, or Aryus, but she probably believed the rebels would lose, and she wanted to align herself with power.”

Greyson shifted to stare at the ceiling, and I watched a lone tear slide down the side of his face.

“Do you think she loved me?”

“Yes,” I said automatically.
 

It didn’t feel like a lie — even after what Logan had said right before she died. I truly believed that if Logan had lived, she and Greyson would have been together.

Greyson nodded, drawing in a shaky breath. “God, she was impossible sometimes.”

I smiled, thinking of Logan arguing with Greyson just to get a rise out of him. “She was.”

“I’m going to miss her so much. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“I know.”
 

I stayed with Greyson for a long while, listening to the sound of his breathing and squeezing his hand when he cried. Taking part in Greyson’s pain was exhausting, but it gave me a purpose. I couldn’t stop to think, because when I did, I knew I would fall apart.

For the next week, I slept very little. I shuffled from bedside to bedside, administering Amory’s pain medication and forcing Greyson to eat. I watched the rebels draw out the last remaining PMC officers from Greyson’s window, and more commune refugees showed up.
 

They were pale and broken, and they brought news of the revolution. The carriers had been contained to one quadrant of the city. Ida was evacuating the last communes in the region and working with the Canadian government to grant them safety until they could return to the states.

I listened to the staticky radio in the hotel lobby, and I knew the rebels from the west were traveling to Sector X to drive out the last of the PMC there.

One evening, I was on the verge of dozing off in my favorite chair in the lobby, enjoying the cool, rainy breeze sneaking in through the sliding glass door.

I heard a voice calling me from a distant place in my memory — a home that smelled like summer.

I opened my eyes and saw the back of a woman standing at the front desk. She was clearly a refugee from the communes, but she was wearing a gray raincoat over the telltale white scrubs. She had a flimsy backpack slung over one shoulder, and the lanky little girl next to her had her elbows resting on the counter, watching the young desk attendant sort out the room keys.

As the woman turned, I caught a good look at the messy curls that framed her face and those warm brown eyes that were so familiar.
 

The girl was unfairly tan, considering it was early spring, with a long curly ponytail and huge chocolate eyes.

“Mrs. Frey?” I blurted.

The woman turned cautiously, and from the man’s confused look and her panic, I knew instantly she had used an alias to book a room. She studied me for a long second, her brain working to connect two very separate worlds.

“Oh my god. Haven?”

Before I knew what I was doing, I was out of the chair and launching myself into her arms.
 

I didn’t think about how I must look — tangled hair, borrowed clothes, and bedraggled from days without sleep — but she didn’t seem to notice. Her arms held me tightly with the gentle care only a mother can manage.

When I pulled away, she seemed unsurprised to see me in rebel black, and her eyes filled with tears.

“I know you,” said the girl with a voice like a bell.
 

“I know you, too,” I said.

“You’re Haven . . . Greyson’s friend.”

“That’s right, Dani.”

Mrs. Frey looked absolutely beside herself. She smiled weakly and let out two full breaths before asking the question I knew she had been dreading the answer to.
 

“Is he . . . Is he
alive
?” She spoke the word quietly, as though Dani’s eleven-year-old ears couldn’t hear them if she whispered.
 

“Yes!” I said, laughing with relief. “He’s alive.”

The look on her face was enough to make it all worth it — the revolution, killing Aryus, losing a part of myself in the process. For once, I did not have to deliver the news that a loved one was dead. I got to bring Greyson back to his mother and sister.

“Do you know where I can find him?”

I laughed again, the grin almost hurting as it stretched muscles in my face that I hadn’t used for weeks. “Yes! He’s here.”

Suddenly, Mrs. Frey’s look of joy was replaced by a quiet fear. After all this time, she was so close, and she probably didn’t want to let herself hope.
 

I marveled at how much she resembled Greyson. Their eyes were identical: loving but guarded. She had his unruly curls and caramel skin. An older Dani could have been his twin.

“Why don’t you go get settled,” I said, thinking of Greyson lying in the dark, completely dead to the world.
 

I couldn’t let his mother see him like that. Not after nearly a year apart. “I’ll bring him to your room in a few minutes.”

She nodded, wiping the tears that threatened to spill over with a shaky hand. Dani was jumping up and down, nearly pulling her mom’s arm out of its socket in her excitement.

I left them in the lobby and tore up the stairs to Greyson’s room. I shoved the key in the slot and barged in without knocking.
 

Greyson was still right where I’d left him: lying on his bed fully clothed, staring up at the ceiling.

“Get up!” I nearly shouted.
 

He turned his head to face me, intrigued by my breathless voice and the excitement on my face.

“Hurry!” I yelled, springing onto his bed and jostling him.

He rubbed his eyes lethargically, hair sticking up in the back.
 

I grabbed his arm and pulled him out of bed.

“Get in the shower! You won’t believe who’s here!”

He stood there, arms hanging limply at his sides, and I wanted to hit him. Yes, I knew he was grieving, and my heart broke for him every time I looked in those eyes. But he wasn’t the only one who had lost Logan — just the only one who seemed to have died right along with her.

His look of emptiness turned to irritation when he caught me staring at him, and he gave a heavy shrug and slumped back down on the bed.

“Go away, Haven. I don’t want to see anybody.”

“Yes, you do,” I said, unable to rein in my enthusiasm.

“No.”

“Greyson, your mom and Dani are here.”

He looked up at me, a wrinkle appearing between his brows. “Shut up.”

“Really. I was just sitting in the lobby, and they walked right in the front door.”

“I said
shut up
, Haven!”
 

His voice was angrier than I’d ever heard it, and I took a step back, bumping into the wall.
 

“I know you’re desperate to get me up and at ’em so you can stop thinking about Logan, but that’s just about the shittiest thing you’ve
ever
done.”

His words felt like a slap. Without thinking, without pausing to explain, my fist flew out and decked him across the face. He lurched backward, smacking his head against the fake hotel headboard, and looked up at me.
 

What was that gleam in his eye? Satisfaction? Amusement?

“I’m being serious. Your mom and Dani are getting settled in their room right now. I told them you’d come see them in a few minutes. But I won’t bring you to them like this. You look like shit.”

“Are they really here?” he asked in a scratchy voice.

“Yes.”

He tried to smile, but his shoulders sagged in defeat. He knew he’d been a ghost for the last week. He’d only eaten the food I’d shoved under his nose, and judging by the rank mustiness of the room, he hadn’t so much as showered since we’d been here.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” I said. “But you have got to pull it together.”

He sighed, and I continued. “We all lost her, Greyson. But Logan would kick your ass if she saw you moping around like this. This isn’t grieving. This is you wishing you were dead, too. She wouldn’t want this for you. She
told
me.”

Greyson pulled in a shaky breath. “Yeah . . . that sounds like her.”

He sagged against the headboard, his shoulders drawn in so tight that he looked like a little kid. I sank down beside him and put an arm around him.
 

Then the sobs came — horrible, dry sobs — and I realized how much Greyson had changed since he was taken from Columbia. Now the revolution was nearly over, and he had nothing to redirect his focus. He had suffered as much as I had, and he was broken.

But now his mom and Dani needed him.

I let him cry for a few more minutes, stroking his messy hair, and then I shoved him in the bathroom and went to round up some clean clothes from the donation bin in the lobby. They wouldn’t be his clothes, but at least they would be clean.

I fished out a well-worn pair of jeans and a light-blue T-shirt I thought he’d look good in. Then I waited outside the bathroom while he fussed over his clothes and his overgrown, shaggy hair. I called through the door that he should shave, and he muttered an irritated stream of words that sounded like reluctant agreement.

When he finally emerged, I swallowed down the urge to tell him how handsome he looked. There wasn’t much to be done to hide the dark shadows under his eyes or the strain to his smile, but he was clean-shaven, dressed, and up and about with a new purpose.
 

Secretly, I smiled because I knew Logan would wolf-whistle and cock her head to the side in the flirty way she always did.

I steered him down the hallway to the correct room and knocked softly.
 

The door flew open almost instantly, and Mrs. Frey’s eyes filled with tears.
 

Before she could close the small distance between them, Dani flew into Greyson’s chest like a cannon. He looked good-naturedly winded in a big-brother sort of way, and his mom reached forward to wrap her arms around him.

They stood like that for a while: Dani’s skinny arms wrapped around Greyson’s waist, and his mother enveloping them both, stroking Greyson’s hair and sobbing quietly.

I tiptoed down the hallway to leave them on their own. Greyson was in good hands now.

I let myself into Amory’s room and was surprised to find him sitting up in bed, leafing through a John Grisham novel. He jumped a little when he heard me come in but gave a small smile. There was an odd strain to the corners of his mouth I’d never seen before, and a wave of dread washed over me.

“Shriver brought me this when she came to check on my wound,” he said, holding up the book. “She also said that painkillers are being rationed, so she can no longer allow my ‘recreational use’ of oxycodone now that I’m starting to recover.”

I laughed. “That sounds like Shriver.”

“She also told me what happened to Logan,” he said quietly. “How she died.”

My breath caught in my chest. “I’m sorry. I should have been the one to tell you.”

Amory sighed. “It’s okay. I’ve been really out of it.”

I gave a shaky nod and sank down on the edge of his bed. Amory’s eyebrows drew together, and he held out his good arm expectantly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

I climbed gratefully over to him, settling in the crook of his arm and breathing in the warm, woodsy smell of him. Somehow, the hospital antiseptic and the stale, smoky odor of the hotel room could not mask his true smell.

Maybe I didn’t have the right to be happy after everything that had happened, but in that moment, I was so thankful for him. I squeezed him tighter and buried my face in his good shoulder, trying to memorize every curve of his chest.
 

Sometimes I didn’t feel as though I deserved Amory.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I thought you would blame me. I know I do.”

“What?” His grip tightened around me. “No. No, of course not. Not ever.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away. I just . . . I-I should never have trusted Mariah. All she’s ever done is lie, and in the end, she even lied to herself. I believed her, and I shouldn’t have.”

“No. Haven, no.” He gave me a little shake. “Look at it this way: Logan knew her better than anyone, but Logan believed her.”

I shook my head, fighting the tears threatening to burst. “It doesn’t matter. Logan’s gone now.” I drew in a ragged breath. “I won’t ever see her again.”

Then, strangely, I felt a rumble of laughter.
 

It started low in Amory’s chest and burst forth from his lips. He squeezed me as his chest shook, and I jerked around in his arms, worried that he’d completely lost his mind.
 

“
What
?”

“I’m sorry. I blame the painkillers for the insensitive laughter, but . . .” Amory’s eyes crinkled, and I could tell this smile was real. “Sorry, I just don’t believe that for a second.”

I must have looked confused, because Amory continued. “Logan was so . . . feisty. I think I’ll probably see her all the time. Even when she was alive, it was like she was in my head . . . like my annoying, violent conscience.
 

“Any time I would pick out something to wear, I’d hear Logan making some snide remark. When I’d shoot, I could practically hear her scoffing behind me like
she
could do better. It’s like she was arguing with me before I even made a decision.”

Amory was smiling, and I realized I was, too. He was right. Logan wouldn’t fade away that easily. She refused to be ignored.

We sat like that for a while, both of us remembering Logan. We talked about her and Godfrey and Kinsley, and I finally let myself cry. Amory didn’t mind that my tears soaked the shoulder of his T-shirt. He just held me tighter.

I told him about Greyson’s mom and sister, and we speculated about what Ida might be doing and how long we thought the revolution would last.