“I can breathe fine.”
“You’re not.”
I want to argue but I can’t because he’s right. I’ve been holding my breath and now I have to let it out and they’re all going to see.
“I’m tired.” I make myself move. One foot. “Long day.”
I walk past the couch. Past Vaelor, who steps back to let me through. Past the kitchen doorway that smells like food and makes my hands want to shake.
I glance back without meaning to.
They’re all watching me go. Locke’s hands are fists at his sides.
I walk faster.
Up the stairs, third door on the left. I close it behind me and lean back against the wood until my hands stop shaking.
What the fuck was that?
I couldn’t think out there. Couldn’t land on a single thought before the next one hit—my brain stopping at the door, staring at the one by the window, moving toward the silver-haired one like my body had its own plan.
That’s not me. I don’t do that.
This is adrenaline. It has to be.
I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars.
It doesn’t help.
Chapter 7
Beckett
She’s gone and I haven’t moved.
The hallway swallowed her up thirty seconds ago, maybe longer, and I’m still in the chair with my book closed on my lap like I’m waiting for something. I don’t know what. Permission to breathe, maybe.
She stepped toward me.
I keep coming back to that. Not the way she looked—though that’s there too, silver-blonde and pale-eyed and so thin it made something in my chest ache—but the way her weight shifted. Toward me. One step she didn’t mean to take before she caught herself.
I’ve spent my whole life watching people. Learning what the small movements mean—the ones they don’t know they’re making. The way someone angles their body toward the door when they want to leave. The way hands curl into fists before a word gets said. The way eyes flick to the most dangerous person in a room, even when they’re pretending not to notice.
She did that with Locke. Tracked him without looking. Flinched when Vaelor moved too fast. Went rigid when Kyron wouldn’t stop staring.
But when she looked at me, her shoulders dropped.
I don’t know what I did. I wasn’t trying to do anything. I was just sitting here, not asking for anything, not pushing, and she—
I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.
What am I supposed to do with that?
“Well.” Rane breaks first. Of course he does. “That went.”
“Fantastically,” Kyron says. Dry.
“I called her beautiful out loud. To her face. Within the first ten seconds.”
