Grief tightened around his ribs. He took a breath that trembled out and lost his balance when Reed barged into the shed.
“Whoa!” Reed grabbed him by the pant leg. “Careful.”
“Careful? You almost knocked me over.Yoube careful.” Anger rose out of habit, before Nate could remind himself that he didn’t have to use it like a shield to keep Reed’s tenderness away.
Reed remained silent, patiently giving him a moment to untangle his feelings. His eyes were big and kind—as green as a leaf in the sun.
Nate held on to the wall with his left hand, his right still bandaged and unwieldy. His anger drained, and he ducked his head, ashamed to have snapped. “Sorry. Were you watching me?”
“Maybe.” Reed crammed himself into the corner of the shed, dodging around the scrap metal and copper panels and pipes they’d manage to scavenge so far. They didn’t have a Diffuser yet, but Val had a lead on one.
Val had come to Ivy House and explained to them, tripping over her words, that Agatha had threatened to find the family she supported as a Courier. She’d been too scared to tell Nate to go to Ivy—and she’d been unwilling to tell Nate to go to the Breakers.
Nate didn’t trust her, but the only other person he knew who could find a Diffuser in the Withers was gone.
He worked on the still every daylight hour, sleeping in the shed beside the growing machine and only stopping when his hands cramped up too much to use them. Even then, he read over Ivy’s notes and scrawled out his own plans. Pixel helped him, acting as his hands when he couldn’t manage delicate work that had come so easily to him before. She never complained, even when he kept her tinkering through meals and Sparks and Brick had to come up looking for her.
Lately, he’d been finding her own notes beside his. Little additions to his figures. Suggestions that spoke to a gift for tinkering that would soon surpass his own.
Peeling paint flecked from the wall onto Reed’s shirt and forearms. He brushed it away with his long fingers. “What are you working on today?”
“The alarm. Ivy said it’s been broken for ages.” He couldn’t call her anything else. It didn’t feel right on his tongue. “She needs it working with the still up here.”
“It’s good to see you tinkering again.” Reed studied him with a halting smile, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to.
“Trying to,” Nate said, frustrated with how slow it was working with one hand. Something else slowed him too—the nagging worry that if he built another still, someone else might take Agatha’s place. He pushed the worry aside. For Juniper. For Pixel.
And when he let himself want a future, for himself too.
Reed pushed through the silence. “Did you see all the mending Sparks has been doing? She’s happy as a star about it. Ivy’s got some fancy, shiny sewing needles.”
“I know the feeling. These are good tools.” A new belt hung heavy on Nate’s hips, a familiar weight that made him useful. Even at a one-handed pace, tinkering was easier than carrying on a conversation when he didn’t know what to say, wasn’t sure what they were. What they meant to each other now.
“You were his wish, you know,” Reed said abruptly, blurting the words out like a cough.
Nate’s fingers went clumsy, and he gave up on trying to get anything done. He hopped down from the cinder blocks, landing heavily and mostly on Reed. “What?”
Reed rubbed his elbow. “He was in love with you.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Nate blanched. He’d said the same thing to Alden when Alden had prodded and pushed him about Reed.
It’s not like that.
Was it?
“Nate.” Reed touched his shoulder carefully, like he was reaching for a sharp edge. His warm fingers drifted, absently tracing the skin at Nate’s collar.
“He thought I was with you,” Nate said, struggling to talk through the shivery sensation of Reed’s touch. “I think. . .Pixel told on me.”
Reed’s hand went still. “Told on you?”
It was a betrayal to talk like this when Alden was gone. But Alden had relished gossip, drinking up neighborhood news and stories of woe and betrayal from every chem fiend who sat in his shop long enough to be interrogated. He’d probably love this.
Nate’s voice came out choppy and upset. “She told him what I felt about you.”
“What do you. . .?” Reed’s fingers clenched up in Nate’s shirt. “What did you say to her?”
“Nothing. She could tell.” Nate’s skin lit up like a fever. “Everyone could.”
