Read Taken for Free Online

you? I’m stronger than I look. Everyone always thinks I’m this kind, caring thing, because of my healing hands, but I can be forceful if I need to.”
    “So I’ve heard.” I chuckle. “And, yes, I was being honest.”
    She gives me that look again, the same one from the Clinic.
    I still can’t read it.
    “I hate the slatings,” she says.
    “Me, too.”
    “How many have you gone through with?”
    “You don’t want to know.” I can count them on two hands and even though it’s been a long time since I’ve slept with anyone, the number is still more than I want to admit to her. “You?”
    “Just one.” So the rumors are wrong. “You remember Craw Phoenix?” she asks.
    I nod. He was lost to the Heist about a year and a half ago.
    “I liked him,” she continues. “And I mean really liked him. It was so nice for that month, and for some reason I thought it would last and we’d have something. I don’t know what. It was stupid, really. I wanted to continue slatings with him, but I guess the feeling wasn’t mutual. Two weeks later he was seeing Sasha Quarters, and then he was gone completely.”
    “We’re all gone eventually,” I say. “That’s half the reason I hate it, too. I don’t see the point of the scheduling and the moving around. I only have ’til I’m eighteen. I’d rather find something good, something comfortable, and stay in it.”
    She gives me a half smile. “You mean be with one person? Like, beyond the duration of the slating?”
    “Forget the slating. Pretend there’s no slating and there’s no rules and there’s no Claysoot and then, yes, one person. Forever. Is that weird?”
    It’s quiet for a moment. I know it’s an odd question, completely hypothetical and outlandish, and for a second I think she’s going to laugh at me.
    “You know, some hawks mate for life.” She bites her lip and looks back out over the water. It’s a ripple of icy silver in the earth, the valley bleeding blue into its depths.
    “Really?”
    “Yeah, the red-tailed ones. My uncle and I used to see them here each year. Always returning, always the same pairs together. If the birds pick one mate for life, why can’t we?”
    I feel foolish for a moment. I spend hours in the woods every day and I’ve never noticed this in the hawks. Then again, I was never looking for it.
    “Maybe some animals mate for life and others don’t,” I say. “Maybe we’re not supposed to be like the birds.”
    “Maybe we are.”
    She looks so pretty, sitting there, twisting grass between her tan fingers. I wonder if we are the only people who wish this, who long to ignore the matchups and procedures and settle into something that feels right. There I go again, thinking with the feelings in my chest instead of using my head. If we were like the birds, we’d die out in a matter of decades, once all the men were gone. I still wish it were possible though, wish I were a bird and Emma were a bird and we could fly away without looking back.
    “You really are nothing like him,” Emma says. It pulls me from my thoughts and I find her staring at me, again with the same inquisitive look I can’t read. “Like Blaine,” she clarifies.
    “I know, I know. He’s kind and responsible, and I’m reckless. He thinks things through. I react.”
    “Yeah, I know, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it’s good to just react, to not overthink everything. If we were wild and free, like the birds, you’d survive. Blaine probably wouldn’t. He’d be too worried with pleasing everyone and making everything fair.”
    “Sounds like I’m pretty selfish.”
    “No, that’s not what I meant.” She wrings her fingers anxiously. “I’m trying to say that I think doing what you feel can’t always be easy, but at least you’re being true to yourself.”
    “It’s okay, Emma, you don’t have to try to make me seem like a better person. You don’t have to justify why it’s all right to spend time with