Free Freaks Under Fire by Maree Anderson Page B

For his then seventeen-year-old self, those months without her had seemed like a lifetime. But he’d never considered how hard it might have been for
Jay
. He had presumed she’d simply gotten on with covering her tracks, deleting her previous identity from public record, tidying up loose ends. He hadn’t considered that she, too, might have suffered emotionally.
    God, he’d been a fool—and a selfish one at that, thinking only of himself. At least he’d had his family to help ground him. Jay’d had no one.
    She placed her hand on his arm, yanking him from a mire of self-recriminations. “None of you are to blame for my illogical decisions,” she said. “But there is now considerably more to be considered than merely a missing cybernetic hand.” She rubbed an eyebrow—the gesture so intrinsically human that Tyler’s heart flip-flopped. “I need to get dressed and we need to talk. All of us. No exceptions.”
    Tyler’s dad shifted uneasily. “But—”
    She made a slicing motion with her hand to silence his protest. “No buts, Michael. It’s not right to keep the full truth from Marissa any longer. We need to tell her everything—just as I need to tell all of you what happened after Sixer left. I want everyone to have all the facts before any decisions are made.”
    “You’re right.” Tyler’s dad nodded slowly, and Tyler thought he seemed relieved.
    No surprises there. Tyler both understood and agreed with the reasoning behind keeping the full truth from his mother and his sister, but it hadn’t sat well with him. He didn’t like secrets. He’d kept a few big ones himself. He knew firsthand how secrets destroyed trust and ruined lives. Keeping this one must have been doubly hard for his dad. But even though Jay happened to be right, didn’t mean it was gonna be easy coming clean. Jay’s actions might have made it possible for Tyler’s dad to return to his family, but Tyler’s mom had taken a long time to trust her husband again. His parents’ relationship was still fragile. And Jay’s relationship with Tyler’s mom was still pretty damned rocky, too, which made things real awkward.
    On his mom’s part, Tyler got the impression fear was the main reason she was playing nice, rather than any real desire to have Jay be a permanent part of their lives. He’d made it crystal clear that if she badmouthed Jay again, or tried to force a choice between her and Jay, the shit was gonna hit the fan big-time. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but right now, observing Jay’s carefully expressionless face, he was afraid it might.
    And he was afraid, too, of something he was barely able to acknowledge: that Jay might take the choice from him. If she concluded that her presence threatened their safety, she would leave… and there would be nothing Tyler could do to stop her.
    “I’ll be down in five minutes,” Jay said, her crisp no-nonsense tone a clear dismissal.
    Tyler’s dad left without a word but Tyler lingered, half-expecting Jay to at least hint what she planned to discuss.
    “You, too, Tyler,” she told him. “Go put the clothes through the washer before you forget and they’re irredeemable. I’ll be down shortly.”
    He frowned at her, unease churning in his belly. “Are you okay, Jay?”
    When she finally answered, her voice was small and thin and wholly unlike the capable Jay she usually presented to the world. “No, Tyler, I’m not okay. I believe… I might be scared?”
    He opened his arms and moved, meeting her halfway as she stumbled into his embrace and wound her arms about his back to hold him tight against her. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder and he could feel her shaking. He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask but he had to know so he forced the question from his tight, aching throat. “What are you scared of?”
    “That when I tell you everything you’ll want me to leave.”
    “Funny,” he whispered into her hair, “because
I’m
scared you’ll decide