Chapter 584 | I Expect Platinum

Chapter 584: 584 | I Expect Platinum

Up on the helipad, Blair Davenport had been standing on one leg in my crew neck like a very angry flamingo, staring down three hundred meters of wet gravel that God had designed specifically to punish heiresses without shoes.

I bent my knees and held out my arms.

"Absolutely not."

"It’s this or the gravel."

She lasted four more seconds and one pebble. The pebble found her arch, and she grabbed my forearm to keep her balance and held on. I scooped her up before she could mount another defense, and she made a noise like a teakettle hitting the boil, and the seventh ring in my skull went supernova.

"This means nothing," she told the ocean, once I’d started down the switchback.

"Absolutely nothing."

"I am allowing this because the alternative is gravel. You are a mode of transportation. No different from a shuttle or a ferry."

"I’m a ferry."

"Do not make that a joke."

Too late. The word ferry sat between us with the weight of a railing that still had scorch marks from where Blair’s hands had gripped it on Sunday, the day before she kissed me hard enough to trigger the academy’s fire suppression system. Blair must have caught the connection because she bit the inside of her cheek and the temperature of her skin jumped another two degrees. The crew neck fabric between us would start smoking soon if she didn’t get her thermostat under control.

I adjusted my grip, sliding my arm slightly higher under her knees, and Blair’s breath hitched. The sound was small and involuntary and she would have cut out her own tongue before admitting it happened, but I heard it clearly because my face was about six inches from hers and B-rank Endurance came with enhanced sensory processing. Her fingers on my right shoulder tightened, and her nails dug into the fabric over Addison’s scratch marks from last week.

"Your heartbeat is elevated," I said.

"I am being transported against my will at an unreasonable hour. Elevated heartbeat is a medical response to kidnapping."

"This isn’t kidnapping. You grabbed my arm first."

"I was stabilizing myself on uneven terrain."

"You grabbed my forearm and held on for four seconds."

"I counted two."

"Your father’s helicopter was still visible. You held on for four."

Blair’s head turned toward me for the first time since I’d picked her up, and her ice-blue eyes were close enough that I could see the individual shards of lighter color around her pupils that only appeared when she was fighting something she didn’t want to name. The morning light hit the burn scar that ran from her collar down beneath the crew neck, and the pink ridge of healed tissue caught the gold and turned it into something that looked less like damage and more like decoration.

"Stop counting things about me."

"Fox counts things. I remember them."

"There is a difference."

"Yeah. Fox puts them in a spreadsheet. I put them here." I tapped my temple with the hand not supporting her knees, and Blair tracked the movement the way she tracked incoming projectiles during combat drills. Her lips parted by a single millimeter, and the morning air between us tasted like salt and eucalyptus and whatever expensive moisturizer Blair used.

The trail curved past a stand of eucalyptus trees, and the gravel gave way to packed dirt for twenty meters before resuming its campaign of foot destruction. Blair’s weight in my arms was lighter than expected for someone who hit like a cruise missile, and the crew neck that had previously belonged to me and then to Aurora’s shopping spree and then to Belle’s theft and finally to Blair’s acquisition hung from her frame like it had been tailored for her.

"You can put me down now." Blair’s voice had lost its edge. Not entirely. Blair Davenport would die before losing her edge entirely. But the cutting tone had softened into something closer to the voice she’d used in the cave at two in the morning when she’d told me her kissing was not mechanical and dared me to teach her otherwise. "The dirt section is smooth enough."

"We’re going to hit gravel again in fifteen meters."

"I can manage fifteen meters of dirt."

"And then three hundred meters of gravel."

"I’ll hop."

"You’ll hop. Blair Davenport. Heir to Davenport Industries. Elite Ten adjacent. S-rank Hellflame. Will hop barefoot down a gravel path in a stolen sweater at five fifty in the morning."

"It is not stolen. It is evidence."

"Evidence of what?"

Blair’s mouth worked around several responses, discarded each one, and settled on something dangerous and quiet. "Evidence that you exist."

The seventh ring did not burn. The seventh ring sang.

I kept walking. Blair kept not asking me to put her down.

She did, however, maintain a running commentary on the inadequacy of my transportation services. My pace was too slow. My arm position was unprofessional. My face was too close to hers. My smile was irritating. The shirt I wore smelled like the gym, and she did not appreciate being transported by someone who had already completed push-ups that morning. The bite mark on my throat was inappropriate for public viewing. The scratch marks visible on my arms from Addison were tacky. My boots needed replacing, and she would send me a list of acceptable brands because a Davenport does not ride in economy.

Through every complaint, Blair’s left hand stayed on my shoulder. Through every criticism, her body remained tucked against my chest rather than held away from it. Through every insult about my fitness routine and my friends and my wardrobe, her fingers traced the line of my collarbone through the training shirt in a pattern she would later claim was involuntary muscle response to being held at an unusual angle.

One bend lower, the switchback opened onto a view of the service road at the bottom of the hill, where a black car idled at the curb and two small figures stood together under a navy umbrella in a sky without a single cloud in it. One of them had a lime green ponytail. Blair saw them too. She didn’t say anything, and neither did I. I took the fork toward the residential side and left them the road.

We reached the main path that led toward the residential buildings, and the gravel ended in clean concrete. The campus was still empty at five fifty-three. Nobody walked the quads. Nobody sat on the benches. The sprinklers had finished their cycle, and the grass shone wet and impossibly green in the morning light.

I set Blair down on the concrete.

She stood there for a moment with her bare feet on smooth ground and her hands still on my shoulders, her fingers resting against the fabric as though she’d forgotten they were there. The crew neck settled against her thighs. The morning breeze caught her red hair and pushed it across her face, and she did not immediately brush it away.

"Building C is four minutes that way." I pointed. "I have extra boots in my closet. The right one has a scuff mark from the Monterey shelf."

"I am not wearing your boots."

"You can’t climb back up to Summit barefoot. That gravel already tried to eat you once."

Blair’s fingers lifted off my shoulders one at a time. Pinky first, then ring finger, then middle, then index. Her thumb left last, dragging across the bite mark that Misato had left on my shoulder days ago.

"Tonight," Blair said. "Seven o’clock."

"You said that already."

"I’m saying it again so you remember."

"I remember everything you say."

Her ears went nuclear. The concrete beneath her left foot darkened in a perfect toe print as moisture evaporated from the surface. She spun and walked toward Building C without looking back, her bare feet slapping against the smooth pathway, my grey crew neck swinging against her pale thighs with each step.

She made it six meters before she stopped.

"Monroe."

"Princess."

Her whole back went stiff. The crew neck collar pulled tight against the back of her neck. Steam wisped from her shoulders into the cold morning air.

"When this is over," Blair said without turning around, "I expect the collar to be platinum."

She walked away. The sun caught her red hair and turned it to fire, and the scorch marks she left on the concrete faded to nothing, and the seventh ring in my skull settled into a steady, white, beautiful burn that I felt in my teeth and my ribs and somewhere deeper that I wasn’t ready to name yet.

I stood on the empty campus in the gold light of early morning with my arms still warm from carrying her and the taste of eucalyptus on my tongue and eighteen days on the clock and a weapon being built in Santa Barbara from folded dimension and every single bond I’d ever made.

Blair Davenport wanted the collar to be platinum.

I’d give her platinum and make her wear it to breakfast.