Read Online Disrupted by Claire Vale - Free Book Online Page B

right again.”
    “I—um, well, I don’t think he’s into that kind of fixing,” mumbled Chris.
    “Trust me, if anything threatened Christian Wood’s perfect world, he’d be there like flash.” I heard the bratty envy in my voice. I didn’t like myself for it, but there it was.
    It was all coming out in the wash now, wasn’t it?
    Oh, God, and now I sounded just like mum. Could life get any ickier?
    I could almost feel the self-pity glugging up in me, from the toes on upward like a person-jug, and I knew I should stop.
    Just stop.
    But this pathetic, bitter emotion was there, real, more solid than anything else in my life had seemed for months. More solid than this crazy alternate future I’d been thrust into. More solid than the loser existence awaiting me.
    I looked straight into Chris’s eyes. And I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I’d also have ended up some kind of hero with a destiny if I’d had a Drustan watching over me. “God forbid anything messy like a broken home distract you from your humongous destiny.”
    Chris dropped his gaze from mine, rocking back until he was sitting on the floor, drawing his knees up. “My mother died when I was a few weeks old. I have no idea who my father is. Either Nan never knew or she won’t tell me.”
    What?
    I stared at him blankly, waiting for my brain to catch up.
    A lifetime of pictures surged up at me.
    Outings to boring museums.
    Freezing my ass off in Hyde Park while mum and dad frolicked amongst the leaves.
    Comforting arms wrapped around me.
    Bickering over the TV remote, quarrels and slammed doors, laughs and steaming mugs of hot chocolate.
    I closed my eyes, trying to imagine it all away.
    I couldn’t.
    It would be like—like cutting off an arm or leg.
    “Oh, Chris.” My throat was so tight, I could barely speak. My eyes opened on him. “I’m so sorry.”
    He shrugged. “It’s not your fault.”
    “But the way I went on and on like that about a silly divorce when your—” I stopped myself just in time.
    “When my situation is so much worse?” Chris finished, looking up again with a frown. “It isn’t, you know. And I only told you because, well, you seemed to have the wrong impression. I’m used to people just knowing, I guess, being as Biggs Hill is.”
    “I didn’t know.” I felt like hitting myself over the head. Preferably with an iron frying pan.
    And that was before I remembered the way I’d spoken about his perfect world and humungous destiny. Oh, God, my name is Spite. I am that person.
    “I am such a cow. I should be grateful for what I have, but here I am, mucking all my self-misery out over you.” A sharp ache gnawed at my tummy, a hard nip each time I recalled what I’d said, what I’d thought. “I’m a horrible, horrible person.”
    Chris put his hand on my arm. I expected a half-hearted pat, followed by something like, “There, there, you can’t help being a stupid, selfish prat.”
    Instead his hand stayed there, steady and comforting. “Then that makes two of us,” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling with his smile. “Because I sure as hell wouldn’t feel any less worse about getting a B for math just because the rest of the class got Cs.”
    I had no idea what his grades had to do with anything.
    But he was still looking deeply into my eyes, with that warm smile, and then I understood.
    About his grades analogy.
    About a crappy life being no less crappy just because someone else’s was crappier.
    And also a little more about the amazing compassion he was capable of. I looked into his eyes, into the warm smile there, and saw something of the man Chris would one day be. It was a little like the genetic stamping Drustan had spoken of, or at least my interpretation of an instant download. Because right then and there, without very much to go on, I absolutely understood why Chris was the one who’d one day earn the SWAT team watching his back.

 
     
    Chapter 7
     
     
     
    W e were marching back