The words hit harder than I expect. I try not to ask questions I don’t want the answers to.
Inside, the place is warm and sparse. Functional furniture. Rugged charm. A fireplace in the corner that looks like it hasn’t been used in a decade. I drop my bag inside the door and toe off my sneakers.
And there it is.
Thebed. Then my eyes sweep the room and see the couch. It’s tiny. Like I couldn’t even fit on this thing. How is Crewe going to sleep there?
Crewe notices too. His brow pulls into a small frown.
“I’ll take the couch,” I say immediately. I squint at said couch. It’s a sad little two-cushion thing that might accommodate one of his thighs. But at least I could fit on it. Sort of. “You’ll never fit on that,” I say.
“I’ve fit on worse.”
“Oh yeah? Where doesthatland on the Crewe Hawthorne scale of suffering? Below land mines but above paper cuts?”
He gives me a look—dry, deadpan, vaguely amused. “Somewhere between duct tape beds and snow bivvies.”
I fold my arms. “Seriously. I’ll take the couch. I’m five-foot-two. You’re a transformer.”
“No. You get the bed. Non-negotiable.”
“Why are you like this?”
“Because I’m supposed to keep you alive, not well-rested.”
I huff and drop my bag by the bed.
While I unpack, he moves to the kitchen and checks the fridge. I glance up just in time to see his expression twist in confusion.
He holds up one ofat least sevenpackages of cheddar cheese.
“Okay,” he says slowly, “you really hate cheddar cheese?”
I blink. “Yes.”
“Well, the safe house is stocked full of it.”
“Whoever did it is clearly a monster.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You feel strongly about this.”
“As I should. Cheddar is the root of all evil. The villain in the cheese world. It’s chalky. It’s smug. It tries to ruin perfectly good sandwiches with its weird orange attitude.”
“…orange attitude?”
“You heard me.”
Crewe shakes his head, and—gasp—smiles. Not a half-smirk. Not a grunt of approval. A real, actual, full-on smile.
And it takes my breath away.
“Noted,” he says, placing the offending cheese back in the fridge like it personally insulted him.
But the moment fades, because underneath all this—under the banter and the ridiculous cheese discourse—I’m still scared.
I sit on the edge of the bed and exhale. “Crewe… what if this really is about me? What if someone out there wants me gone? Not the drone.Me.”
He’s in front of me before I finish the sentence.
