She shrugs. “It’s the same with my characters. I know them and I understand them, so yeah, when they lose someone or experience pain, I feel it with them.Forthem. And I cry.”
It still doesn’t make sense to me, but it seems to make sense to her. And she isn’t annoying me for once, which is a nice change.
“You really cry?” I ask, eyeing her suspiciously.
She nods. “Don’t you cry at stuff?”
“No.”
“You almost cried over your Oreos.”
I scowl. “I got angry over my Oreos; I didn’t cry. Idon’tcry.”
“Crying is good for you.”
“It’s dehydrating.”
She laughs, and it’s the first laugh that isn’t a cackle. I only ever heard her laugh like that with Asher. My lip twitches, and I look away.
“So …” She crosses her legs. “You just don’t cry?”
“No.”
“What if I hit you really hard?”
“I’d probably laugh.”
“Happy tears?”
I frown. “I can bet mylifeI will never cry happy tearsaround you. Unless I watch someone drop something on you that killed you. That’d be pretty funny.”
“You know, for someone so focused on keeping me alive, you sure do talk about me dying a lot.”
“I’m keeping you alive for Asher—not for me.”
“A begrudging bodyguard. Lucky me,” she says. “Ooh. I should write that down.”
She scrambles back over to her chair and reopens her laptop, typing furiously, and I wonder how long it’ll be until we kill each other.
“We should go over drills again tomorrow.”
Ella sticks her tongue out in disgust. “But they’re so boring.”
“Drills are important. They keep us alive.”
It was Asher’s idea to have backup plans in place, and we’d run drills for them every few months. If he was taken out, what are my next steps, and vice versa. We’d run through various scenarios: if the car was compromised, if one of us was injured, if the house was infiltrated—everything. We always wanted to be prepared.
I’ve run three with Ella and every single time, she’s complained about it.
“It’s just so repetitive,” Ella says. “Everything is dangerous to you. ‘Don’t go for a walk alone, Ella, someone could shoot you.’ ‘Don’t answer the door, Ella, someone could shoot you.’ Everything is about survival, and it’s fucking exhausting.”
I stare at her, unblinking. “I’m sorry me keeping you alive is so tiring.”
“You know what I mean,” she mumbles. “I miss doing normal things. Having normal conversations.”
“You can do normal things once this is all over.”
She scoffs. “And when will that be?”
