“I didn’t.”
He stills, staring at me. He looks from me to Agatha, then behind him, at Ian, who’s glowering.
“Okay. Well.” James exhales, shoves his hands in his pockets. He looks at the other two. “She says she didn’t do it. So unless you’ve got proof—”
Agatha and Ian explode.
I watch, unhearing, as they argue with him, blood rushing to my head.Time seems to draw out and bend, double back and blur. Why is he defending me? How does he know I’m not lying?
“Because,” he says to Agatha, his voice piercing my haze. His voice, I realize, always returns me to my body. “She’s not afraid of you. If she’d done it, she’d admit it.”
“How do you know that?” Ian and I ask at the same time.
James looks from me to Ian. “I don’t know,” he says, glancing at me again. “I can just tell.”
Ian studies me stonily as he considers this.
James exhales. “Hey, don’t forget to run those labs, okay?” He says this to Agatha. “I listed everything in my report. There was something off with that guy yesterday.”
“Let me be absolutely clear,” says Agatha, bristling. “Every one of our patients has been through a rigorous mental and physical vetting process, and Leon was no exception. There’s only ever been one exception, and she’s sitting right there.” Agatha narrows her eyes at me. “Leon has been known to have issues with lucidity in the past, but that is to be expected from someone with his challenging history, and he shows progress every day. I can assure you that there was no alcohol in his system—”
“I know what I saw,” James says with finality. “His eyes were unnaturally dilated. His speech was slightly slurred—”
“Maybe she drugged him,” says Ian.
“Ian,” Agatha cries, offended. “We run a tight ship around here. We would know if she’d brought drugs onto the premises—”
“Look,” James says, sounding suddenly tired, “until you have proof to support accusations against her, this is unproductive. She’s not the first person to lash out at another patient, and since we can’t prove that she was trying to kill Leon—”
“I was,” I say. “I was trying to kill him.”
“That isn’t helpful, Rosabelle,” he says, each word clipped.
“Let’s meet later,” he says to the others. “Ian, don’t you have a session right now?”
Ian glances at his watch and mutters an oath, and by the time he and Agatha trail out of the room—flashing me dirty looks—a soft chime rings several times.
James offers me a grim smile.
“Time to go, troublemaker,” he says. He keeps his face stern, but his eyes are light with private humor. “You have a midmorning session on radical gratitude to get to.”
“Okay,” I say. But I don’t move.
My heartbeat slows as I stare at him, my limbs softening. I feel liquid when I look at him for long enough, like I might come loose from my bones. I like it. I like this silence.
I feel safe in this silence.
“Why do you always look at me like that?” he says, the light fading from his eyes.
“Look at you like what?”
He holds my gaze, his chest lifting slightly as he breathes. I catch the movement in his throat, then linger on the column of his neck, the sharp line of his jaw. I drag my eyes up to his mouth—
He exhales suddenly,looks down. “Nothing,” he says. “Never mind.”
I like his hair.
It looks soft. It seems to glitter in the refracted light of the domed ceiling, touches of gold glinting among the brown.
