"I'm thinking about a lot of things. I'm a complex person."
"Leo."
He puts his hands in his pockets and whistles something. It is the same mildly annoying thing he was humming. He does not stop whistling it until he reaches the Red House corridor junction, at which point he looks at me with studied innocence.
"Good night," he says.
"What are you planning."
"Sleep. I'm planning sleep." He tilts his head. "Gray misses you too, you know. He told me."
"When did you talk to Gray."
"I talk to Gray all the time. We have a very meaningful connection." He pauses. "Established primarily through our mutual appreciation for you, but still."
He goes.
I stand in the corridor and think about Gray in Gold House across the compound and the look Leo gave Jim over the dinner table and what Leo does when he's decided something. Which is the thing I should be worried about. The thing that, if I'm honest, I'm also slightly hoping for.
Chapter nineteen
Gray
Leo comes for me at midnight.
I hear him before he opens the door — his footsteps, his cadence, the way he moves through a building like he owns it. I've been awake. I've been awake most nights since the incident. Since I felt the bond fracture and then hold and understood what she'd done — stepped in front of RJ, taken the hit, held him while he came back.
I've been in Gold House since she shifted. Following the protocol. Doing the work. Telling myself the distance is necessary.
The door opens.
Leo looks at me. "She misses you."
That's all he says. That's enough.
***
Red House at night is a different building than Red House in the day. Quieter. The staff rotation thin. Leo moves through it like he was born knowing which doors and which timing and which corners to avoid, and I follow him and don't ask questions.
We stop outside her door.
Leo opens it.
I go in.
She's awake. Of course she is — the bond between us would have told her I was coming the moment Leo opened my door. She's sitting on her bed with her knees up and the low light of the room catching her face.
I cross the room and sit beside her and put my arms around her and she presses her face into my neck and I hold on. Her ribs. Careful. Not too tight. But I hold on.
"I felt it," I say. "When you stepped in front of him."
"I know."
"Alex—"
"I know," she says again. Her hands in my shirt. "I'd do it again."
I pull back. Look at her face. The brace on her ribs visible at the edge of her shirt.
