The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,60
knew what fear looked like, and that wasn’t it. She was repulsed.
A few feet away, Chubs’s security agent Frank frowned while he pretended to read a newspaper. But Chubs only sat back down, bracing his hands on the freezing stone. His shoulders were bunched up at his ears, as if he were trying to protect them from the cold. I couldn’t tell if his expression had tightened because of the woman or because he had something on his mind—I didn’t like either option.
The rain pattered loudly against my pink umbrella as I closed the distance between us. Finally, Chubs turned toward the sound of my quick steps splashing through the puddles.
“Nice night you picked for a walk,” I said, holding my umbrella over the both of us.
One of the things I really loved about Chubs’s smile was how rare it was; when you got it, you knew it was honest.
“Hey—” All of a sudden his eyes seemed to focus on me from behind his glasses. “Wait, where’s your security agent?”
He meant Aurelia. She was even nicer than Frank and had taught me how to French-braid my hair. “She got recalled. The office said I wasn’t a public figure anymore, and I could rely on Cate for anything I needed.”
Frank glanced over at us, then went back to casually scanning the park. He stood, stretched, and moved to sit across from us on the path, giving us a little more space. His khakis seemed out of season, but Frank didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who put a ton of thought into seasonally appropriate fabrics.
“We’ll see about that!” Chubs huffed. “Not a public figure? As if you didn’t have your name and face splashed out on the news for months. I just saw one of the channels replay your interview the other night! Unbelievable. I know exactly who’s going to hear—”
“Do you think Frank only owns that one pair of pants?” I interrupted. “Should we buy him some kind of wool blend if you’re going to make a habit of sitting outside in the middle of winter to think your deep thoughts?”
“Don’t even think about stealing his clothes from his closet and ordering him new ones,” Chubs warned.
“You look so nice in them, though, and I got all the sizes right, didn’t I?” I said.
Chubs had always cared about his appearance, even when we were traveling in Betty. Liam used to poke fun at him for ironing his shirts, but that was just who he was. Chubs was a reliable, put-together person; during his first few press conferences he’d had to borrow one of his father’s old suits, and it hadn’t fit him right. He wouldn’t take money from his parents to buy a new one, either—not when they needed it more to cover medical costs when his dad had open-heart surgery.
I asked Cate if Chubs could have a small clothing allowance so he didn’t have to riffle through donation bins to find proper business suits. We petitioned Cruz, and she wrote me a personal check for the cost of three new suits Chubs could rotate through until he earned enough of a salary to add to his collection. A regular paycheck, however, was likely still years away. Chubs and Vida both currently worked for housing and a grocery stipend now that we were through the horrifying, mismanaged rationing of the months that had followed the United Nations ousting Gray.
Chubs worked so hard, only for people to cringe away in parks or shout obscenities at him while he took the Metro to his office. He deserved to feel good about this one thing.
“You made me think I’d gone into someone else’s apartment, I almost had a heart attack—” Chubs’s eyes narrowed on me. “Okay, distraction over. If an agent didn’t drive you, how did you get here? If you took the Metro alone, please just lie to me.”
“The Metro is totally safe now.”
“Says who?” he said.
“Says you in a speech you gave last week, the one about why we don’t need special fare cards to ride it,” I said. “Also, hi.”
Chubs was dressed in a sharp suit and dark overcoat, with a blue tie I’d picked out for him for his first day of work. It was almost the same exact shade as the blue pin he wore on his lapel. I pushed my hair off my shoulder, untangling it from the yellow one I’d stuck on my coat before heading out.