Page 36 of Pretty Savage: Defy

Carrson stares at the stars for so long that I start to wonder if he’s forgotten the question. A gust of air ripples the fabric of my shirt, tosses my hair across my face.

“I used to think everybody’s life was decided for them,” he says eventually. “Maybe not exactly like mine, but close enough. Your parents pick where you live. Your teachers tell you what matters. I thought that was just how the world worked. The sky is blue. Fire is hot. Carrson Ashford belongs to The Order.”

His laugh isn’t amused. It’s more like he’s surprised by his own ignorance.

Out in the parking lot, the hotel sign flickers red and white, lighting up the darkness. Families sleep in neat rows beneath us. Kids exhausted from baseball. Parents exhausted from kids. Ordinary people living ordinary lives.

“Then I met you. You keep asking questions. You challenge things. Half the time you’re doing it accidentally.” A fond smile crosses his face before fading. “You walk into a room and act like the rules are optional.”

“They usually are.”

That earns me a look.

I blink innocently.

Carrson shakes his head. “See? That’s what I mean.”

I hold my tongue, sensing there’s more, that he’s working out how to say it.

“Every year The Order handed me another piece of my future, and I accepted it because...” He trails off, searching for the words. “I don’t know. Because fighting gravity feels impossible when you’ve never seen anyone fly.”

A car pulls into the lot below us, but up here, removed from the noise of the hotel and the highway, it feels like we’re the only two people awake in the world.

Just me and Carrson and a sky full of stars.

I’ve never liked the idea that fate is written above us. That somewhere out there our futures are already mapped, fixed and waiting. Maybe that’s because my future always felt fragile. Temporary. One wrong choice away from falling apart.

Carrson’s been handed the opposite burden. His path wasn’t uncertain. It was carved in stone before he was old enough to read the words.

Carrson closes his eyes briefly. “Those families downstairs? I’m never going to be them. According to The Order, I’m meant for greater things,” he pitches his voice high and mocking for those last words, “but sometimes I wonder what’s greater than taking care of your family, raising a kid who sees the world as a place of peace, not as a battleground? Being gentle with them, like you were with Macie.”

He rolls onto his side, facing where I sit cross-legged next to him. He takes my hand and holds it in his. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“You had a life before me.” He swallows. “Not an easy one or a fair one. I know that, but it was yours.”

The breeze moves between us. It lifts the edge of his shirt, skims across the bare skin at his waist, and he doesn’t seem to notice. He looks at our hands, at the place where his fingers have threaded through mine like the answer might be there.

“You could’ve hated me forever,” he says, and his mouth pulls up, not quite a smile. “That would’ve made more sense.”

“It was on the table for a while.”

“I know.”

A small laugh escapes me, but it fades quickly because he isn’t looking at me. His thumb drags over my knuckles.

“You could’ve left Ashfordville and never looked back. Transferred somewhere else. Gone anywhere. Done whatever stubborn, reckless thing you decided was right, because that’s what you do.”

“Carrson—”

“You could have.” His eyes lift to mine, and whatever I was about to say disappears. “You still could.” He lets that linger like a door he’s forcing himself to hold open.

I want to argue, but the words stick in my throat because I finally see where this has been leading. Not to the families downstairs. Not to fathers and children or baseball games or braided hair.

To the ceremony waiting for us back at Ashford. To the blade. The blood.

Most of all to the sealing.