Page 82 of Outcast’s Return

“Say what it was, then.”

“It... I...”

“Exactly,” he says. “You need my help.”

“Acting like I’m in your debt because you took care of me? You would make a great member of the Castaways.”

“That wasn’t a debt, Jolie. I would never trade something like that.”

“But now you think you can fix everything, right?”

Fabien swirls his wineglass between his fingers, the dark liquid ominously circling around inside.

“So you don’t want to hear my plan?” he asks.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m so sure, Fabien.”

“And you really hate the Castaways, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

His head tilts.

“They could be useful,” he says. “They might be the way I get you out of this mess.”

“Fabien, I hate them. I always have. And I don’t want them to get involved in this. I grew up in it. I’ve seen what they can do. I hate what they’ve done to people in my family, and I wish every day I had never even heard of the dumb Order.”

Fabien stares at me.

“But you’re doing this.”

He means us. He means this week.

And that feeds the anger inside.

“I’m duty-bound to my father,” I reply. “You’re so enamored with the Castaways that you don’t understand. Sometimes we all have to do things we don’t want to do. I love my family more than anything.”

“And yet you lied to Clement about us.”

His sentence is a gut punch.

“You can’t say something like that.”

“Why not, Jolie?”

“Because... because...”

My stutter trails off.

“You can’t even come up with an answer,” Fabien rumbles. “You can’t even finish your sentence.”

“Why are you still obsessed with the past?” I ask him.

“I’m not obsessed.”