Free Frozen by Erin Bowman Page A

quiet and guarded and cautious and not yourself. I hate it. I hate how I accept you in your entirety—the good and bad—and you do the same for me, and yet you’re still fighting it. Trying to act like you can’t feel what I feel. Like this won’t work.” She motions between us.
    “Well, look at us. All we do is argue. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe it was never going to work.”
    “Bullshit,” she spits. “A part of your heart has always belonged to her, so don’t you dare tell me this won’t work when you haven’t even tried. Not truly.”
    “ I haven’t tried? Really? Me? Because last I checked, you’re the one rushing out every night, running back to your own bed.”
    “Oh, sure—blame me, Gray. Make this my fault. My defenses could never be because I sense your hesitation. Because I catch you watching her. Because it’s been this way since the day we met. No, I should gladly hand my heart over so that you can stomp all over it.”
    “I have no intention of—are you even listening? This is exactly why I just said everything I did. Because we’re not right, Bree. We self-destruct! Can you not understand that?”
    She throws sand on the fire and the beach goes dark. “Oh, I understand. I understand so well I swear I’m in your head! I knew this was coming. I knew it all along. Do me a favor, will you? The next time a girl wanders into your bedroom, think real hard about what you’re doing before you pull back the covers for her. I’d hate for her to get confused and misled by your oh-so-clear intentions.”
    “I’ll go, then,” I say, because she is furious, and a wildfire cannot be controlled, will not be controlled. A civil conversation is not going to take place tonight.
    I stand and she jumps to her feet, squares her shoulders to me.
    “Yeah, great. You go! That’s just perfect! It really was a lovely birthday, though, Gray. I appreciate the effort.”
    And then she is storming toward the waves, hair whipping in the wind, jacket flailing. I think of following her, but know it’s useless. The only words she wants to hear are words I’m not sure I can give her without lying.

TEN
    BREE WON’T TALK TO ME in the morning. She won’t even make eye contact. When the team heads north along the shore toward Bone Harbor, she runs ahead to walk with Xavier and I feel her absence from my side more deeply than I expect to.
    It is another cloudless day, warm enough for us to forgo our hats and let our jackets hang open. It’s liberating to walk in so few layers after weeks of frigid temperatures. Clipper says the change is a combination of things: the Gulf trapping warm air and the fact that we are farther south than we were when we set out from Crevice Valley. But I don’t care to make sense of the change, not when I can finally feel the sun again.
    Bone Harbor appears well before noon. It is unlike Taem in every way possible. The town is tucked back into a cove, no dome protecting it, no glamorous signs or flying trolley. Docks clutter the shoreline. Shanty buildings along the water are discolored with growth from the sea. The ones set back farther hunch as though the wind has crippled them, paint peeling. The entire place smells like fish, and a rowdy species of white birds hovers overhead, screeching endlessly.
    “Is it called Bone Harbor because it looks like death?” Sammy asks as we enter the town from the south.
    “Course not,” Bo says. “It was the backbone of the fishing industry for a while after the Quake; hence the name. But the flooding continued and the Gulf crept closer to Haven, so now Bone Harbor is just a forgotten waterfront community where those not fortunate enough to buy their way under a dome make do the best they can.”
    “You know something about everything, don’t you?” I say. “Did they let you read a history book on AmEast when you sat in Frank’s prisons?”
    Bo stops tapping at his pack’s straps long enough to wink. “It’s phenomenal how much a person