Trin by JM Snyder

Chapter 1-2

Aissa is two years younger than Trin and sweet Jesus, twice as mean. She told him once that’s all she has: her hair, her t**s, and her attitude, but in this world, that’s a lot. She’s not pretty and she knows it, which is one thing he likes about her—there’s a strawberry-colored birthmark blotched across her forehead that darkens in the sun, and she has a scar above her lip that she claims is from fending off a devlar attack.

Trin knows better. He’s known her since she was six years old—they met right after his parents died. He was sitting on a hitching post outside the waystation, waiting for Blain to arrive, not really feeling much of anything as he watched a scrappy slip of a girl across the street kicking stones. Every now and then he’d turn and stare down the dusty road, but his brother wasn’t in sight. Each time he looked back, the girl was closer, and she had a catty way of looking at him from the corner of her eye that unnerved him.

The next time he glanced down the road, she ran over to the hitching post and pushed him, both hands flat against the small of his back, right the hell off. No reason. Scuffed his knees and hands in the stones she’d been kicking. She got the scar when he pegged a rock at her and it split her lip. He’d never seen so much blood in his life. “It’s alright,” he told her, trying to dab at the cut with the hem of his shirt. The fabric was dusty from where he landed in the dirt, and every time he tried to touch her, she wailed. Her jagged crying was like a saw cutting through his thoughts. “Shh,” he said. The corner of his shirt found her face and she screamed in pain. “Shh, girl. Stop crying, will you? Just stop bleeding already.”

She punched him hard in the nuts and he yanked her hair, and they probably would’ve kept it up if Blain hadn’t stepped in at that moment. Trin hadn’t even heard him ride up. “She started it,” he muttered.

“She’s a girl,” Blain explained. He had a deep voice that scared Trin and hands that seemed too big to be real. When he knelt down beside Aissa, it seemed to take years for his knees to touch the ground. With large, saucer-like eyes Aissa watched those hands. Once or twice she hitched her breath but the tears were gone, the cries, the screams. Trin thought maybe even the cut stopped bleeding once Blain arrived.

Ten years later, she had that same wide-eyed look when Trin ran into her in the hall above the waystation common room. It was late and she should’ve been asleep, they both should’ve, but a gunner had promised to tell Trin about Gerrick’s latest exploit if he’d touch the man and Trin was already half hard with anticipation when he bumped into Aissa. She wore a thin robe and nothing else—Trin could see the dark silhouette of her curves through the material. “Where…”

She pulled the robe closed at her throat and threw her hair back, defiant. The birthmark on her forehead looked like a burn against her pale skin. “Blain,” she said simply. “If he’ll have me. Good night.”

With that, she brushed past him. Always getting what she wants, that’s another thing Trin likes about her. She simply told his brother look, this is the way it is, and in the face of that, what could Blain do?

“You should give it a go, Trini,” she’s said. “You think Gerrick doesn’t knows you like him? The others have to talk about it. Be like, ‘there’s this kid in Arens who’s all about you, don’t you know?’ Mention your name and he’ll follow you around like a lost pup. When he comes through here—and he will, I know it—when he does, just tell him hey. It doesn’t even have to be love, you know? Wake up beside me in the morning, think about me on the run, come back here when you can. What more could you possibly hope to want?”