Stray Read Free Page B

from under my chin.
    “Don’t be like that.” Kitty nudges him. “She has her public to think of.” She winks at me and I scowl. You break the Governor’s son’s nose and you’re never allowed to forget it.
    Jamie isn’t in the mood. “Did you give Everton champagne?”
    “Shhh.” Kitty darts a look over her shoulder. “So?” She screws her nose up and marches off.
    “Brilliant.” He swears at the buttons on my coat and I bat his hands away, making him wince and rub his fingers.
    I
finish hooking the last loops, leaving the parting for my long booted legs. “What’s the deal, sergeant major?”
    “I should take you home.”
    I stare at him.
    “You could hurt someone.” He sucks his bruised knuckles.
    I keep staring.
    “Not on purpose.” He spreads his hands. “Obviously.”
    I can’t stop looking at the corners of his lower lip where they tuck in, the meaning of the furrows in his brow.
He
is frustrated with
me
. I fill my chest, straining the toggles on my coat and grit my teeth. “I’m-getting-in-the-limo.” I turn and march out the door, the coat flapping my stride into a flounce.
    It’s chilly and dark already. The sky presses low above us, no stars. Only the rising moon, a pale circle, glows fuzzily behind thick clouds. Jamie and Kitty’s parents are on the front porch. Everybody lines up to thank them. I stride right past, jogging down the wide marble steps, relishing the crunch of hard-soled boots on fine gravel, letting my heels drive divots in the path with steps like punches. I climb into the limo, dizzy and squinting against the pink neon floor lights tracing the underside of the leather seats. Jamie comes after me. “
Everton
,” he says, removing his hat to duck through the door. He lands beside me. I cross my legs and my arms, my head spinning, and glare past him to the porch where Leonard draws Pete aside, pinning him around the shoulders with his long arm. Kitty waits down on the drive giving her father a black look.
    “There are rules for a reason.”
    “What?” I turn to glare at him but the expression on his face makes my insides shrink. The crushed doorknob, the creaking stair rail, the nearly up-ended hors d’oeuvres, Barb’s comment, Jamie’s fingers. Has the drink really jiggered my signal so that I don’t know my own strength? I ball my fists, feel the thump of my pulse loud in my ears. He means
actual
rules. A Shield’s code of conduct? I swallow before mouthing the words, “The Affinity Project?”
    Jamie’s eyebrows are as high as I’ve seen them. “Surely Miriam said something?”
    My jaw tightens and the let-down of adrenaline sends angry jolts stabbing up my spine. Anger always makes the pins and needles bad. Fury makes them painful. The Affinity Project. I want to break something – ram my elbow through the tinted glass window or stick my head out and bellow obscenities at the blank sky. I close my eyes. “Shit.”
    One worry-free night. That’s all I wanted. Just one. To be a normal girl, with normal friends, going out to do goddamn normal things. A night with Jamie and nothing between us. Ruined. Thanks again to the Affinity Project, a stain on my blank white page. It’s hard to remember hating anything as much as I hate Affinity; a bone-deep loathing for the faceless unknown and the concrete walls of my own DNA.
    Why hadn’t Miriam said something?
    Remember, no alcohol
.
    I dig my nails into my knees at the nudge of guilt. I had taken her warning as generic “parental” advice, not a specific warning about the effect it could have on my genetic modification. Had she assumed I already knew about the risks?
    Jamie sighs. “I can take you home.”
    “Damn it.”
    Abe’s handsome brown face pokes in the door. “Damn, what?” He lifts his half-mask up on to his head and helps Imogen inside.
    “Damn, what?” Imogen asks, flushing pink with the excess of chivalry as she shuffles into the seat opposite me. She’s been nervous and embarrassed