Free Escape (Alliance Book 1) by Inna Hardison Page B

stomp on his stuff, grinding the thin glass into the coal dusted street, sneering at him. She didn't want to do that to him. To make him feel like that again. So she nodded, and then walked over and wrapped her hands around his neck, wishing she didn't have the band on and could hug him properly, waited for him to register that she understood, and that she will wait, and left.
    She waited all these years. A few more days, and she'd know. She could take it. She had to.

Jess
Cassandra, February 17, 2107, Manchester
     
    She saw the ad the day it appeared on the door of her escort service, Lexi's, the one she'd been at for about two months now. She knew it was hers as soon as she saw it. That she finally made it happen. She had to see her. Next week it'll be eleven years of celebrating the bad sister, or rather, the bad half-sister day, as she jokingly called it when she'd just turned eleven and Sandra was gone. Gone to the prep school and then med school. And then gone to the headlines and death threats to her and to mom.
    That school morning of waking up to a small cardboard box outside their front door with a tiny finger in it. The kids she had known her whole life looking at her like she had two heads. Her sister, her half sister, was working on the cure from babies. That's what her friends said. That's what everybody said then, and she was angry. And then, later, she was ashamed.
    She didn't do anything stupid or dangerous in her angry years. She just kept to herself, picked up smoking, when she could sneak a pack from her mother, but other than that she was functional. Quiet, but functional. She got her period later than most girls in her class, at 14, and then she was no longer angry. She was scared and ashamed.
    This, being a woman, the conversations she had with her mother about what it all meant, the consequences of these belly aches, that's what Sandra was trying to stop. It felt wrong. Not that she thought even back then of ever having kids, she already knew she didn't want them, but it, what Sandra was doing, she knew was wrong.
    After her first birthday as a woman, she was no longer keeping to herself. She went everywhere the older kids went. Crashing impromptu parties in old warehouses and abandoned apartments. Somehow the boys could always find enough liquor to keep everyone drunk through the night. Few of these same boys could ever find enough to eat, but the liquor was stealable. So they stole ample amounts of it every week.
    Later, she'd steal it with them, sneaking a bottle of Vodka or Gin under her winter coat. Her breasts grew enough by then to cover the protruding shapes of the bottles, and her face, still that of a little girl, would be the last one anyone thought of. She was okay with it then -the drinking, the boys, the music. She never thought about Sandra in those moments, and that felt good. Until the night Jess called her, in tears.
    That night her best friend, Jess, learned she was pregnant. She ran over to see her at the old ball park they used to hang out at. She didn't know what to do about this pregnant Jess, but she knew she needed to be there, if only to listen to her sob, something she couldn't do over the phone from her house without her parents noticing.
    Jess was early with everything. She stopped looking like a little girl long before anyone else in their class. He body changed over one summer to something fluid, something ill suited to run in or swim or climb fences. And Jess seemed awkward in it. She kept hiding her new curves under old boy sweaters she stole from her brother, the one who died in the war, but she still felt guilty about taking his stuff.
    Jess was a genuinely good sort. She still blushed at everything dirty, and couldn't bring herself to lie with a straight face, couldn't bring herself to steal liquor and no one ever asked her to. But she was always there, tugging along with her to every overnight gathering, so Cassie never had to walk home alone, half-drunk, or rely