I turn slowly to meet the gaze of the man staring at me, registering his astonishment before taking in the rest of him.
He’s immediately striking.
He has a head of thick inky waves and bronzed olive skin. His dark eyes are ringed by sooty lashes. His mouth is bracketed on one side by a pair of beauty marks. There’s something almost feline about his looks, except that his eyes are pure steel. Despite his civilian attire, it’s clear to me at once that he’s a soldier. The build of him, the way he stands, the piercing way he looks at me—
I notice, a beat late, the pendant at his neck.
His top two buttons are undone, revealing a small swath of his throat and chest. There’s a simple chain glinting against his skin that looks like it was half-tucked or poorly hidden, its puzzle-piece pendant winking in the glare of the overhead lights.
“Hi,” he says bluntly, blinking at me.
I set down my fork. I don’t know who he is. I only remember that I nearly killed him.
Tried really hard not to kill him.
He turns to the group. Then, politely, his stiff smile never reaching his eyes, he says, “So you guys just hang out with her now?”
“It’s a need-to-know kind of situation,” says Nazeera.
He arches a dark brow. “Right.”
James sighs. “Rosabelle,” he says, “this is Kian. Kian, this is Rosabelle. You’ve already met.”
“Sure,” Kian says dryly. “We’ve met.”
James nods at the other two and says to me, “And you might remember Allie and Liam.”
I follow his gaze to the towering brunette and the buzzed redhead standing nearby. I remember seeing Allie at the airfield, though I didn’t know her name then. She stands slightly apart from the guys, assessing me with a cold remove.
She doesn’t say a word.
“I remember you,” Liam says, the loathing in his voice a perfect match for the darkness in Allie’s eyes.
I turn toward him, taking him in.
Liam’s hair is so vivid it’s actually orange; his milky skin dotted all over with freckles. Standing so close together, he and Kian present as complete visual opposites; it’s a little jarring to take them in side by side. I had no idea Liam was a redhead; the airplane hangar had been so dark I hadn’t seen him properly. But Liam is unaltered in other essential ways: he wasn’t happy to see me then, and he’s not happy to see me now. I still remember the way he’d pointed an accusing finger in my direction—
She killed Kian.
I sit back in my seat.
“So she doesn’t talk?” says Kian.
“She talks,” says Adam.
“Hey, remember when she didn’t talk?” Winston says, his face brightening. “Those were good times, right? We didn’t know how good we had it.”
Nazeera coughs through a laugh.
“She’s not talking now, though,” says Allie. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her,” says James. “She just doesn’t want to talk to you. Look, we should probably—”
“What are you, like, her interpreter?” asks Liam.
“Yeah.” James’s eyes flash. “And she told me to tell you you’ve pissed your pants.”
Winston barks out a laugh.
