“She’s not hungry,” James says. “She’sstarving.”
“I’m not starving,” I lie.
James ignores this, turning to his brother. “If you’re hoping to get information out of her, we need to keep her alive. She needs sustenance or she’ll be in no state to help anyone. She hasn’t eaten in days.”
“Days?” Adam stiffens. He looks at me. “Why would you go that long without eating?”
Winston’s fork clatters to his plate and I look up to find him gaping at me, a dot of syrup glistening on his cheek. “Oh my God,” he says to James. “Oh my God, this is why you tried to make soup. The swamp water in the kitchen was for her, wasn’t it?”
I turn to James, my hands unclenching from the jacket.
James glares at Winston. “Shut up.”
Winston cackles. “You were trying to cook for her!”
The memory of James’s voice rises up inside my head—
You need sleep. You need soup.
Do you like soup?
I feel like I’ve been punctured.
“Fuck you, man. You have no loyalty.”
“Okay, where the hell is Warner?” says Adam loudly, looking around.
I add a note to Adam’s file: conflict makes him uncomfortable.
“He said he was coming,” says Nazeera, tossing a loose end of her shawl behind her shoulder. She frowns, stabbing a piece of potato before dipping it in ketchup. “He should’ve been here by now.”
Winston opens his mouth to say something, but Nazeera cuts him off with a stern look.
“Also, Winston is sorry.” She turns to face him as she says this. “Aren’t you, Winston?”
“Not really.”
“Fine,” she says. “You want a psychological evaluation? You’re an emotionally stunted gargoyle who uses snark and sarcasm to mask deep, oppressive sadness.”
Winston scowls, about to protest—
“Yeah, okay, that’s true,” he says, spearing another piece of waffle. “Though I take issue with the wordgargoyle.”
Still, James doesn’t thaw.
In fact, he’s only gotten tenser, cutting the waffles as if he’s performing surgery.
“You made me soup?” I ask him quietly.
I watch him swallow before he shakes his head. “I tried,” he says. “I made swamp water instead.”
A tide of feeling swells inside of me, heat pressing against the backs of my eyes. I’m suddenly afraid of what might happen if we’re ever alone—what else I might allow myself to feel for him.
How much I might want from him.
James finally looks at me and his gaze is so intense I can practically feel the pulse between us. He exhales unevenly, the tension in him dissipating only a little. Then he pushes my plate in front of me, ceramic scraping softly against the Formica. The pieces are bite-sized now.
I look from him to the plate.
