Skye stopped crunching on her carrot and waved the bite-marked stub of it around like a teaching implement. “Should you two be fighting this early on in your relationship?”
I gave her a long look, her sparkling green eyes countering mine in a challenge as she bit down on the last of her carrot with acrunch, thoroughly pleased with herself. I joined Leland in the hall.
Privacy fell into place as I sat, pulling my legs underneath me. Leland planted his arms on the arms of his lounge chair.
“Why?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes handsome with apology. “What I think might’ve happened was . . . I was going for warm, safe, secure.” He wet his lips. “And I think you had a hard time placing those feelings with a happy memory. Which made it — ”
“Embarrassing?” I guessed, and avoided his reaction, instead gazing over the stone balustrade that connected the stone arches winding up the column of the arcade. Below, it was still. Not how mornings used to be when Rayne and Belinda had their routine. They’d decorated the arcade with floral arrangements. Belinda used to hum like a fairytale princess, Creating vases, following behind Rayne. Now the arcade was silent with brown-edged petals collecting in sad puddles, and no one wanted to clean them up.
“I was going to say complicated,” Leland said. “I wouldn’t have held your essay over you. I would’ve messaged you the second I read it. I would’ve asked you,privately, if you wanted to stay after class. Fortimewith you. But I’m not sure you see that.”
That’swhat was complicated for him?
“I was referring to the part where I took my clothes off.”
His eyes did the sad thing. “You wanted physical affection. That’s what made you feel warm and safe in that moment, and it was with me because I put the emotions in your head. I influenced your dream more than I knew would happen when we agreed to this. That was my classroom. That essay is an assignment on my syllabus. That bra is a memory burned in the back of my head. The physical affection was both of us.Nothingabout that is embarrassing.”
I slumped in my chair and hid my face. “I showed you my tits.”
“I didn’t look,” he lied.
I banged my head on my knee, intentionally.
“Not really,” he clarified, though still lying. “Itriednot to look at them. The perspective in dreams is — ”
I pushed off the chair and headed back to my room.
“Now where are you going?” he asked, getting up and following.
I couldn’t even deny it. Him following me — this was what I wanted. I was warm with the memory of his minty breath, the pine on his clothes, the feel of his scruff nuzzling the sensitive skin below my ear. If he saidCome. Here. like thatin real life, I knew I would do it.
He reached for my wrist to stop me from going into my room, and his light touch took the strength out of me. I lingered there, my skin tingling and on fire and desperately wanting more from him.
“How about you change?” he suggested. “And we go for a run before it gets hot?”
Of course, I thought about him as I put on the Creation Academy shirt he’d infused with cooling magic. And thought about him as I deliberately avoided the leggings I’d once looked over my shoulder to find him staring at, putting on unflatteringgray shorts instead. And, of course, I was aware I’d gone straight from fantasizing about what could have been with Gray to losing myself in the thrill of whatever was happening with Leland. And I hated that. But that didn’t mean I couldstopdoing it, even as I tried. I really, really, really tried.
We left the academy quietly, and once outside, I had to focus, concentration necessary as I stumbled over the rocky slopes and dips of the academy’s pedestal. The second we hit the flat stretch of dust-covered ground, we started running toward the city. I thought of Belinda as we passed the field of purple ivy and sprinted a few paces ahead. Under the rising sun, rays of golden light bounced off tall, silver buildings, and I marveled at millions of tinted windows, hundreds of skyscrapers, their birds-eye views.How many buildings had Leland—
Nope.
We turned, and there was nothing to see to force my thoughts onto, the sun blinding, my eyes contracting in a squint. My pace slackened as my thoughts started spinning around him again, and Leland took it as a sign to rest. He found us some shade near the portstop to Conventicles Crossing, reminding me of Hartik’s Hollow, the palace, the Allwitch temple, and Belinda, the latest Seven to go missing.
Leland braced his hands on his hips, breathing in and out quietly. “Is this helping?” he asked between breaths.
Why did I like listening to him breathe?
“No,” I said definitively. Shade wasn’t helping. The run wasn’t helping. Alobotomywouldn’t help me.
Leland pointed at a table under an umbrella. “Want to sit?”
We ordered smoothies from his transmitter, not saying much at first. Leland and I switched cups halfway through drinking our smoothies: strawberry banana for apple blueberry. I liked having something to do with my hands. A straw. Condensation on the clear plastic cup to play with. I traced the shape of a cat’shead out of an accumulation of water droplets, its ears more rounded than Nova’s, its face wider for some reason.
Because it wasn’t a house cat.
Because it was a mountain lion, like Ven, Leland’s Familiar. The corners of Leland’s mouth pulled in a knowing smile, and I pushed the cup away.
