Part 34 (1/2)

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Chapter thirty-tWo.

i don't Want your liFe to end Thursday, July 25, and for the eighth day in a row Jamie managed to get out of bed unaided. Just six days left. Hey, I'm counting. Must be feeling better. Time to push a little; she wanted to finish before Lynn showed up.

Almost every weekday, Lynn visited her. It was the way Jamie secretly measured time. How many days left 'til it's just me and my shadow again.

Jamie didn't understand why Lynn still came by, but didn't ask.

Asking might jinx it. Besides, it'd be over soon enough, once the Corps s.h.i.+pped her off to one of those rehab places for loners like her. Just six days. How strong would it be by then, this hollow, ethereal stutter between her and the world she inhabited? Like she was always a half-step late. Like I'm not really supposed to be here.

But she was here. Stuck with herself.

Pressing the incision in her belly with one hand to contain the ache there, relying on a cane to ease the pain in her right thigh, she hobbled from her bed all the way to the far end of the long hallway outside her room and then back. For a few seconds at the end of her journey, she felt almost free of the stutter, so she repeated the effort before she cautiously inched herself into bed and dropped into depleted sleep.

On Friday, Jamie took to the hallway again. Four laps today.

Maybe five.

On the fourth perambulation, roughly three hundred paces from her room, she turned around and found herself face-to-face with Martina Rhys.

* 276 *

”Marty!” she called when she realized Rhys didn't recognize her and was about to walk right on by.

Rhys halted, her expression veering from surprise to shock.

”Jamie!” Her voice softened to a hush. ”Hi.” Jamie limped into Rhys's gentle grasp, let her head lower onto Rhys's shoulder.

”You okay?” Rhys asked after a long moment. ”Need to sit down?”

”Nah,” Jamie exhaled, lifting her head. ”I'm just a little tired.” She gestured toward the silver bar gracing the collar of Rhys's service uniform and grinned. ”Nice going, First Lieutenant.”

”Got coyoted after you, uh-” Rhys scrunched her shoulders apologetically.

”You sure as h.e.l.l earned that. Come on, walk me to my room and tell me how you're doing.” After she'd broken free of the pharma, Jamie had asked around about the Three-Eight snipe platoon and heard Marty had gotten the coyote promotion. At last Marty, too, had crossed the Rubicon and they were equals. Jamie waited for the old fantasy of a life with her first love to percolate, waited for her c.l.i.t to punch that double flip.

But it never happened. Something had changed.

Now Jamie glanced at Rhys and tried to understand what was different. In her service greens, silver bar on her collar, ribbons on her chest, a tan making her hair blonder than ever, Rhys looked magnificent.

No wonder I was in love with you.

When had Rhys become past tense? Where was the Instant, the still point that defined this Before and After? Jamie recalled Way Before-so easy to see now in the Undeniable After-and as the flashes of their moments together played across her mind's eye, she recognized the slow, doomed descent of a failed flight she had tried to save from its inevitable crash. Yet she had missed the actual impact, the end of hope. Where had she been? Shooting an innocent child? Mewling in Shoo Juh's concrete tomb? Maybe it was earlier, at the top of Thumb Peak when Embry's hand gripped her shoulder and she knew she'd give in and let him make her a one-lite. Or earlier yet, much earlier, when Rhys's face, Rhys's voice couldn't hide how much it hurt to be outshot by Jamie Gwynmorgan.

* 277 *

For a disorienting moment, the stutter caught her; Jamie gaped into its immense empty chasm and faltered. Each instant bears a still point, dimensionless in one plane and infinite in another, surrounded by arcs of before and after. And where am I? What world is this now?

If she hadn't been holding on to Rhys's arm, she would have toppled over.

Rhys didn't notice. While they slowly progressed down the hall, Rhys talked-about how the Three-Eight snipes ended up in the Palawan until February but managed to come home without any KIAs, about what it felt like to be an officer, about how she'd be going to The Basic School next, then to college and intel school. Her chatter became a sort of fixed point on which Jamie focused to keep the vertigo at bay, like an ice skater coming out of a scratch spin.

Listen. Leaning into Rhys, Jamie heard disquiet and couldn't figure out which of them it came from. Jamie waited. Did Rhys want to say something else, something more? It spilled out, finally, after she helped Jamie into bed.

”I'm getting married.” Rhys gave Jamie a sideways glance.

Did she just say-? ”What? You're-?”

”Getting married.” Rhys smiled, her face an artless, fitful mix of euphoria and guilt.

”Getting married,” Jamie echoed. ”Who?”

”I'm gonna marry Angara Bulanadi.”

Jamie gaped; she could not speak. Her head had become heavy, too heavy to hold up anymore, and she yielded it to the pillow, unable to cease staring at Rhys.

Venturing into Jamie's stillness, Rhys tried to explain. ”That day- That day when Angara-When she didn't shoot you...” Rhys's voice trailed off for a moment while she repositioned herself, planting her feet as though she stood at parade rest. ”You were out of your mind, you know. Only reason I went with you was so I could keep you from-from doing what you did. I don't know why I didn't just step up and grab the pistol out of Angara's hand.” Rhys sighed. ”There was something about her. The rage. She looked like a monster out of a horror movie. When she put that muzzle right to your head, I was sure she was gonna zap you.”

”I remember,” Jamie said, letting her eyes close as the ache in her gut deepened.

* 278 *

”But I couldn't f.u.c.king move. I just couldn't think, couldn't act.

Everything froze and-and I just stared at her, you know? Stuck. And then I saw her-G.o.d, Jamie, she became someone else. It happened right in front of me. Sadness first, and acceptance-and then I saw her forgive you.” Rhys's voice cracked, and when Jamie looked, tears had filled Rhys's eyes.

”I remember.”

”I'd have killed you, Jamie, if I'd been her. And when she didn't, when she said that to you-remember? 'I don't want your life to end.' You didn't see her face, Jamie. She looked at you with such compa.s.sion.” Rhys's eyes swept down to the floor. ”My G.o.d, I couldn't believe what I saw. It changed everything for me. Everything I used to care about, everything I ever thought-about who I should be, you know? I had to get closer to that-to comprehend it. And she let me, she actually let me. And then-”

”And then you fell in love with her.”

Rhys looked up and nodded.

”Does she love you, Marty?”

”Yes.” Rhys exuded quiet confidence. ”She does. Unreservedly.” Jamie reached out to Rhys for what she knew would be the last time. Because Marty had gone where she could never go, not even for an instant: To the mother of the child she murdered.

Rhys took Jamie's hand, frowned at its scars. ”The Corps can be a small world, you know? I wanted you to hear it from me.”

”I'm gonna miss you, Marty. Miss what we had.” Rhys averted her eyes then. And Jamie understood. No, you don't miss what you had with me. You're relieved to be rid of it. Maybe that's why you can't sit down.