Chapter 17: Outside the Loft

"He's a friend," I said, "and he's been up for two days."

I put a laugh into it.

"Jonas, sit down before you embarrass us both."

The hall laughed with me, relieved.

Keaton squeezed my shoulder, and the chaplain called the next item.

Jonas stood a moment longer.

Then he picked up his axe at the door and walked out, and I felt every step of it in my teeth.

I found him in the armory's old weapons cage, a steel mesh room off the drill hall with empty gun racks on three walls.

He stood with his back to the mesh and his arms folded.

I shut the door behind me.

"Outside the loft," I said. "Those were the words. Nothing changes outside the loft."

"I know what I said."

"You said it with your whole mouth in front of two hundred people and the man who wants to open my chest."

"He kissed you in front of all of them, Reese." His voice broke. "He put a ring on you. I counted every second of it."

"I know! I let him! That's the plan, Jonas, that's the entire plan, and you walked in and set it on fire!"

"Then tell me it's wrong."

I opened my mouth.

"Tell me it's wrong," he said, lower. "Tell me you didn't want me to say it."

I had the ring in my fist.

I dropped it on the concrete, and it rolled away, glittering, under a gun rack.

"Outside the loft," I said, shaking, "nothing changes."

"Then say we're outside it."

"We're in a cage."

"Then that's not a loft."

I grabbed his shirt in both hands and kissed him.

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