Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
As if anyone was going to let me leave Icehome Beach unless I snuck away? Come on. “I needed to get away from the camp, just like you. And you know I’m right—if there’s some computer stuff here, who’s going to help you with it? A’tam? M’tok? S’bren?”
“A’tar did not want females with us,” R’jaal states. “In case there truly is a stranger we have not met yet. Remember how Juth stole R’ven.”
Don’t threaten me with a good time, I think, but I keep that to myself. A stranger would solve all my problems. It would just hurt R’jaal to know that I’m about as enthusiastic about our resonance prospects as I am for dung collecting. I glance up at him, since he seems to want to hover over me. “You and I both know no one else is getting dropped on this planet, R’jaal. Like it or not, we’re stuck with each other. But I appreciate the company. Here I wanted to come back and show everyone how I’ve matured and I completely lost it when I found out about I’rec.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t know that you do. I feel we’re on different pages.” And you act more like my dad than my suitor, but we’re stuck with each other.
That realization makes me blink hard, and then the waterworks start up again. Tears spill down my face and I sniff. Crap. I swipe at my face. “Never mind. I just need to work through it. My shit got turned upside down four years ago when we got here and I was able to figure it out. I’ll figure this out, too. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone.”
He doesn’t argue. He’s probably relieved. “I am going to visit S’bren and the others. Shout if you need anything.”
I stare down at my knitting and wonder if I should just start over. My stitches are too tight. I pick up the hat and tug on the loops to see if they’ll loosen, but no dice. I can’t exactly give gifts to my ex-boyfriend right in front of his new mate anyhow. That’s weird. Awkward and weird. Maybe I’ll turn it into a bag of some kind. I flip it over in my hands and contemplate how to start over.
It seems like I’m always starting over. Every private boarding school I went to as a child, where I had to start fresh every time my parents decided that the curriculum wasn’t ‘challenging me enough’. Then when I arrived here on the ice planet. Then again to Croatoan. I should be used to this by now, but each time I have to ‘reset’ again, it hurts more. I sniff again, my nose full of snot.
Snot and angst. It’s not my favorite combination.
I cry on and off through the day, undoing my project and starting over. I’m going to make a scarf for Raashel, I decide. Something with cute, festive pompoms because every little girl deserves cute pompoms. I stay up on the ledge by myself for most of the afternoon, because I hear M’tok talking shit about me and S’bren and A’tam laughing, and I feel incredibly alone.
They were my friends once, and they were so eager to play kissing games. Now everyone’s mated and I feel like more of a pariah than ever.
I wonder if I can live permanently in the fruit cave. I can be like the stories of a cottage witch in the woods, just hanging out and eating fruit and minding my own business…except there’s no fruit. And I’d be too lonely anyhow. I like people. I’m miserable alone and on my own. It reminds me too much of summers back home with my parents. They’d send me off to one boarding school or another so I could have the ‘best’ education, but summers were terrible. When I wasn’t at camp, I had to stay home. Home meant two parents completely absorbed in their work and with no time for me. The only child of two successful, highly educated lawyers, I’ve always been treated more like a box being ticked than a person. Couples in successful marriages have children, so my parents had one. Me. And then they’d leave me with a nanny or send me off to private school because parenting was too time-consuming. They loved me in their way. They just couldn’t divert time away from important casework for a bored, lonely child.
So no, I need people around. I don’t want to be alone.
It’s not that I don’t like the people here. I like everyone at Icehome, even M’tok. But I don’t know where I fit in anymore, and I want to run back to Croatoan and hide again. I don’t know how R’jaal could stand it all these years, watching everyone resonate around him. I’d have fucking lost it.