Oblivion

“And why are you here right this instant?” My patience was almost gone.

“I think we can get around the onyx,” he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and holding them in front of him. “Now, hear me out. This is going to sound crazy.”

“Oh, goody,” I muttered.

“I think we need to build up a tolerance. If that was what Daedalus was doing, then that makes sense. Hybrids have to go in and out of those doors. If we expose ourselves to it—”

“Are you insane?” As I clasped the back of my neck, I felt like I’d been asking that question a lot lately. “You want us to expose ourselves to onyx?”

“Do you see any other option?” he replied.

“Can we do this later?” Kat asked, watching me. “We’re going to be late.”

“Sure.” He sidestepped me. “After school?”

“Maybe,” she replied. “We’ll talk later.”

He didn’t look too happy with that answer, but he backed off, leaving us by the fence. Kat shook her head as she faced me. “Expose ourselves to onyx?”

I huffed. “He’s insane.”

“Do you think it would work?”

“You’re not…?” I trailed off. Shit. She was seriously considering this.

“I don’t know.” She switched her backpack to the other shoulder as we started toward the school. “I really don’t know. We can’t give up, but what other options do we have?”

“We don’t even know if it will work.”

“But if Blake really is sort of immune to it, then we can test it out on him.”

Huh. I gri

Kat laughed. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? But seriously, if he has a tolerance to it, then we should be able to? It’s something. We’d just need to figure out how to get some.” When I didn’t respond, she asked, “What?”

I squinted as the sun broke free of the clouds. “I think I have the onyx part covered.”

“What do you mean?” She stopped even though the warning bell rang.

“After Will got you and a couple of days after Dawson came back, I returned to the warehouse and stripped most of the onyx from the outside.”

Her jaw hit the ground. “What?”

“Yeah, I don’t know why I did it. Kind of like my big FU to the establishment.” I laughed, kind of embarrassed. “Imagine their faces when they went back and saw it all gone.”

Kat was speechless.

I tweaked her nose.

She smacked my hand away. “You’re insane. You’ve could’ve gotten caught!”

“But I didn’t.”

She smacked me on the arm, this time harder. “You’re crazy.”

“But you love my craziness.” I leaned down, kissing the corner of her lip. “Come on, we’re late. The last thing we need is detention.”

She snorted. “Yeah, like that would be the biggest of our problems.”

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Blake had gotten to Dawson sometime during the day and told him about the whole exposing ourselves to onyx idea, and of course, Dawson was so down for that shit.

Couldn’t really blame him for latching onto the idea, though, because it was giving him something to work toward. It was giving him back hope. I got that. Still didn’t make me happy that Blake had gone to him. I didn’t want that asshole anywhere near my brother. Or anyone in general.

When I told Kat about it on the way home after school, she looked as thrilled as I was about it all. Blake had managed to make sure we did talk about the onyx that night.

Kat sighed. “There go my reviewing and reading plans.”

“Shouldn’t it be reading and then reviewing?” I corrected with a grin.

“Whatever,” she muttered.

I pulled out onto the road as my grin faded. “Why can’t you still do that?”

“If Blake wants to talk tonight, then that’s going to soak up all my time.”

Hearing the pout in her voice, I glanced over at her. “You don’t need to be there, Kitten. We can talk to him without you.”

“Yeah, right.” She laughed. “There’s a good chance someone will kill Blake without me there.”

“And would you really be torn up about that?”

She scrunched up her face. “Well…”

I laughed.

“And the fact that upon his untimely death, there’s a letter delivered to Nancy Husher. So we kind of need him alive.”

“True.” Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, I reached over and caught a strand of her hair. “But we can keep it short. You’ll have a normal Monday evening full of normal suck and not extraterrestrial suckage.”

Looking away, she bit down on her lower lip as she squeezed her fingers together. “That’s really selfish of me.”

“What?” I tugged on her hair gently, not liking the sound of that at all. “It’s not selfish, Kitten. Your whole life can’t revolve around this crap. It won’t.”

Straightening her fingers, she smiled. “You sound so determined.”

“And you know what happens when I get determined.”

“You get your way.” She laughed when I raised my brows. “But what about you? Your life can’t revolve around this crap.”

I pulled my hand away, dropping it to my thigh. “I was born into this. I’m used to it, and besides, it’s all about time management. Say, like time management last night. We did our mission thing—”

“And failed.”

“There’s that, but the rest of last night?” Seeing her in my mind, as she’d been last night, under me, was really distracting when I was driving. “We had the bad—the not-normal. And then we had the good—the normal. Granted, the good was interrupted by the bad, but there was time management there.”

She stretched her legs out. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It is that easy, Kat. You just need to know when to draw the line, when you’ve had enough.” Slowing down, I turned onto the road leading to our houses.

“And if you’ve had enough for today, you have. Nothing to feel guilty about or to worry about.”

There was no response as I pulled into the driveway. Turning off the engine, I looked over at her. “And no one will kill Bill.”

She laughed softly as she unbuckled her seat belt. “Blake. His name is Blake.”

Amused, I gri

“You’re terrible.” She stretched over and kissed me, but when she pulled away, I wasn’t done. I reached for her, but she evaded me and slipped out of the SUV. “And by the way, I haven’t had enough today. I just needed a kick in the pants. But I do need to be home by seven.”

I was out of the car and beside her before she even shut the door. “You haven’t had enough?”

Her cheeks flushed as she stared up at me. “No, not nearly enough.”

“Good.” Hands on her hips, I tugged her to me. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Kat rose onto the tips of her toes and slid her hands up my chest. I met her halfway. Our lips touched. Our hearts pounded in tandem.

The front door of my house swung open and Dawson yelled, “Hey! I think Dee caught the microwave on fire. Again. And I tried popping some popcorn with my hands and it kind of went wrong. Like really, really wrong.”

I pressed my forehead against hers and growled. “Dammit.”

Kat giggled. “Time management, right?”

“Time management,” I muttered.

Chapter 16

Mostly everyone was down for the whole onyx thing, and even though none of them spoke up as to why they were so willing to allow some of us to repeatedly expose ourselves to a ridiculous amount of pain, I knew better. They knew it was the only way to keep Dawson from ru

Or worse.

As I looked around the living room, seeing my friends and Kat, I realized then that even though Matthew and the Thompson siblings shared no blood with me, they really were the true definition of family. My throat constricted. Only this kind of family would continue to be a part of this craziness, risking their freedom and lives.