I drop bills on the table, nod at Karla, and follow her out into the cold.
On the way back, she slips once on a patch of black ice, and her feet skid out from beneath her. Her weight goes sideways.
I catch her without thinking—one hand wrapping around her upper arm, the other bracing at her lower back. She weighs nothing. Less than the duffel I brought.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Ugh,” she groans. “Yes. My pride’s bruised. That’s all.”
“We’ll ice it,” I say.
She tilts her head back to look up at me, cheeks pink from the cold, hair escaping her knot in wild curls.
“Was that another joke?” she asks.
“Maybe,” I say.
Her mouth curves, quick and sharp.
“Look at you,” she says. “Developing a sense of humor. Next thing you know, you’ll be letting me drive.”
“Not a chance.”
“I have an excellent driving record.”
“You also admitted you trip when you read,” I say. “I’m not giving you two thousand pounds of moving metal.”
“Wow,” she says. “Body-shaming my car now.”
“You don’t have a car,” I remind her.
“Semantics.”
She slips again, less dramatic this time. I tighten my grip until she steadies, then let go.
Big and small, I think.The monster and the hummingbird. Bodyguard and gremlin.
But when we reach her building, and she keys in the door code with cold-reddened fingers and a Rudolph-nose, and turns to look at me like she’s weighing whether letting me into her space again is a good idea, I know one thing with absolute clarity:
Whatever Kael said about keeping my hands to myself, about keeping my head clear—he underestimated how hard that was going to be.
She holds the door open a fraction wider.
“You coming, or what?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, stepping in after her. “Let’s see what the state cops just set on fire.”
EIGHT
TWIGGY
Bythetimeweget back to my apartment, my fingers are twitching so hard I nearly drop my keys.
I blame the news alert. And Bran’s hand.
Mostly the alert.
Partly the fact that when I slipped on the ice, he caught me like it was nothing—one big palm at my back, the other closing around my arm, solid as a wall. No grunt, no wobble, justcatch, steady, release.
