Sleeping Dogs Lie

Chapter Thirty-Two

Aaron and I lay together in his bed, the blanket wrapped around us. One of Aaron's spaceship movies is playing loudly in the background, but neither of us is watching it. I think it's a movie we've seen a gajillion times together.

I'm still stunned over the realization that Aaron has been working with Sander this whole time. That, while I've been blissfully tripping around the Hex on my own, the two of them have been working behind the scenes to do... Well, whatever it is they do.

There's this small, hard seed in me that wants to chafe over it. To stick my finger up under Aaron's nose and really let him have it for keeping me in the dark.

It is so hard to let go.

How can I be angry with them, when I know that so much of what they've done has been to keep me safe? And I've obviously been an idiot and needed their protection. I want to trust. To trust that their motives have been good and pure. But I feel like their secrecy is somehow a declaration of their lack of trust in me. It's so hard to reconcile those two things.

And I can tell there's more Aaron wants to tell me, too. I think it has more to do with whatever he's been up to in the bottom levels of this tower with his minions. I'm not sure if I want to know how much more he's been keeping from me, and I feel left out and hurt by the realization that I've never been involved as I've thought I am.

So when he sighs deep in his chest and pulls me closer, I know it's coming. I only hope it doesn't blow apart all the good that seems to have come from being together with him.

"I need to tell you some things, Alecto," he says. See? I knew it was coming. "Things about what's going to happen here with the Hex and the Elysion buildings. I know you've been downstairs and have seen some of the cleaning and whatever, but that doesn't even really scratch the surface of what's been going on. And I don't want to keep those things secret from you anymore. I need for you to come along and be an equal partner with me in this movement that's starting. Do you understand what I'm asking for?"

I can't look at him, so I watch the movie, just to have something to look at.

"I'm not sure. When you say 'equal partner,' you're talking about business, right? Like, we lead together?"

That's what it sounds like he's saying, at least. But one thing I know about Aaron is that he doesn't like to mix business with pleasure. He's told me so before. That's why there's no kissin' in the Kernel. He'll let me walk by him and touch his back or hair, but what's going on in the Kernel is something he likes to keep completely separate from what goes on between us when we're tucked up under this comforter. Would a business relationship like that negate what we have when we're alone?

"Yes," he says, watching me intently. "We'll make the decisions together about how to run the operation. The entire operation. You and I will lead whatever becomes Elysion together, sort of the way Allen runs the Hex alone. I have a certain system in place now – it's the way I've been dealing with the rebellion movement while we live in the Hex. But I don't want us to live here anymore, I want us to live there, and right now, I'm the only one who knows how all this works and fits together. If anything were to happen to me, there would be a bunch of people who know bits and pieces of it, but no one person with a comprehensive overview. You probably know more about it than anyone else already, just from things you've pieced together, but you still only know a small part of what's really going on. From now on, I want you to see the whole big picture."

Everything he said just sounded like "blah, blah, blah..." There was only one part that really registered with me. It was the part where he said, "If anything were to happen to me..." It made me cold and hot and strangled all the same time.