I press my face into her shoulder and breathe.
Chapter twenty-four
Ifeel him coming closer to my room.
Dalton steps in. He's in his dark jacket, but he's carrying himself differently. The professional distance has been gone since the yard — what's in its place is something I'm still learning the shape of. He's holding a bag.
"I was going to wait," he says. "Until you graduated to Orange House. To celebrate."
I look at the bag. "What is that."
"A gift." He says it like it's a simple word. It isn't. I can tell from the way he's holding the bag — carefully, like it matters — that he's been carrying this for a while. "I noticed the uniform situation."
"The uniform situation."
"It's not designed for—" He stops. Tries differently. "You deserve things that feel good. Against your skin." He sets the bagon the bed beside me. "I also wanted to say thank you. For—" He stops again.
He doesn't have the words yet. That's okay. I wait.
"Jim," he says finally. "I came here for Jim and I didn't know it was Jim and I wouldn't have found him without—" His voice does something. He gets it back. "Without you. Without this. Without all of it." He looks at me. "I owe you something I don't have a word for."
I look at him for a moment.
"Can I open it?" I say. I don’t think he understands how much I want the gift bag.
Something in his face shifts. Like the question surprised him. "Yes. It's yours."
I open the bag.
Folded carefully in tissue paper. I lift the first one out and it's — the color hits me first. Bright. A deep coral, vivid and warm, nothing like the grey or red palette of everything in this facility. I touch it and my breath catches.
So soft.
I sit there holding it and try to understand what's happening in my chest. The fabric slides under my fingers like water. I press my palm flat against it and feel the give of it and think about the fact that someone stood somewhere and looked at this and thought of me. Not of a resident. Not of a woman in a facility who needed practical things. Of me specifically — the width of my shoulders, maybe, or the way I carry myself, some detail he noticed, kept, and carried all the way to this.
"There are three," Dalton says. "Different colors. Bras and underwear and—" He stops. "Pajamas. Soft ones."
I look at the second set. Emerald green. The third is a deep blue that's almost violet. All of them bright. All of them impossibly soft.
I haven't had many gifts. The list is short and most of them were practical — things people gave me because they had to or because it was expected, not because someone looked at me and thoughtshe would like this, she deserves this, I want her to have something beautiful.
"Alex." Dalton's voice. Careful. "Are you—"
"I'm fine." I look up. My eyes are doing something I don't have control over and I don't try to stop it. "I'm really fine. I just—" I look at the coral set in my hands. "Nobody's done this before."
He's very still.
"Given you things."
"Given me things because they wanted to." I look at him. "Because they noticed."
He crosses the room and sits on the bed beside me and doesn't say anything. He sits close. His shoulder against mine.
"Your skin—" he pauses. "It's like silk. I noticed the first time I was close enough." A pause. "I wanted you to have things that matched that."
I press my face into his shoulder.
His arm comes around me. Careful of the ribs, even now, which makes me press closer.
