Lie Like a Villain

Chapter 19 || Hero Delusion

Ana haunted Jason in his dreams. Her pitiful and accusatory gaze pleaded with him to come to her, demanded to know why he wasn't there already. She held her hands out to him, crying. When he reached out to touch her, though, she'd dissolve, appearing somewhere ahead.

He ran all night and never caught her.

Jason snapped awake, exhausted and ill-at-ease. His arm throbbed, a nasty taste lingered in his mouth, and hunger clawed at his stomach. He groaned as he pushed himself into a sitting position.

Rachel glanced over, shoulders hunched. "About time."

He scowled. "Were you planning on going somewhere soon? As far as I can tell, we're stuck on a train." The countryside flashed by through the slit of open door.

"Right now, sure. But it's gotta stop at some point. I was beginning to think you'd sleep through it." She crossed her arms and looked away.

"So what, I'm in trouble for..." His good hand rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to push back the headache forming there. "...not being conscious? Why not wake me up?"

"What am I?" she muttered. "Your babysitter?"

"You act enough like it," he scoffed. His arm throbbed harder and harder the longer he sat up, like all the blood was repositioning inside him. He leaned back against the wall, cradling it.

Rachel wouldn't look at him, crawling away to peek out the door. His jaw clenched. The longer he stayed around this girl, the less he knew what to think of her. She was about as constant as a light switch: nearly-sweet to caustic, deathly serious to flippant, safety-paranoid to daredevil. It was a roller-coaster he wasn't sure he could keep up with. Right now, he wasn't in the mood to even try.

One-handed, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Did you check the gun?"

"No," she said, back to him. "And I'm not going to."

"You—" His hand pressed against the bridge of his nose, pressed so hard it hurt. She hadn't checked it. She didn't know. She poked her nose into literally everything else; why not the one thing he laid right in front of her? "Why are you so absolutely, ridiculously stubborn?"

"Because you're tricking me again," she said, still looking outside. "You feel bad for getting me involved, right? And you wanna get rid of me." She swung her legs over the edge of the crates, back to him. "Whatever's up with the gun is part of your trick. I ain't falling for it."

"You're hopeless," Jason said, anger rising in him. He knew he should box it up, shove it down, but for once, he let it boil out. "Absolutely, completely hopeless!"

"Oh yeah?" She turned back, jaw crooked.

"Yeah!" he shot off. "Who gave you that split lip? Some jealous boyfriend? Some heavy-fisted father figure?" She paled, but he didn't let up. "You like beating yourself up, Rachel. How long did you let them hit you for?"

Her eyes went cold; her posture stiffened to ice. "I don't let anybody hit me," she hissed.

"You'd let anybody that smiled at you twice hit you," he spat. "Just hoping they'd smile at you again."

"As if you would know!"

"You wanna talk about what I know? I know you have nowhere else to go, or you wouldn't be tailing me like a lost puppy," he said. "I know you suck on that split lip because you like the way the pain feels, just a little bit. I know you're too used to things being hard to take it easy, too used to being the one who will when everyone else won't. You think that it makes you strong, that it makes you special. What it makes you especially easy to manipulate. I know you think we're friends, and I know we're not."