And RJ.
Patient. Heavy. I press my thumb against my wrist and feel him — alive, present — and under it his howl still lodged behind my sternum where it's been since the van.
I know, RJ. I miss you too.
Dalton's heartbeat is steady under my palm. I focus on it.
"I need clothes," I say.
A beat. "I'll handle it."
I look at him.
"Tomorrow." His arm tightens slightly. "Tonight you don't need any."
I lie there for a moment longer.
Then I sit up.
He lets me go.
The cold air of the room hits my skin and I reach for the sheet and pull it around my shoulders and sit on the edge of the bed and look at the bag on the floor. The map still folded on the table. The empty bookshelves.
"I don't—" I stop. The sheet is soft under my fingers and I focus on that for a second. Start again. "I don't know what I need."
Silence. He doesn't fill it.
My hands twist together under the sheet. "I don't know what I like. I don't know what size I am in anything that isn't issued and I don't—"
My throat tightens. I get through it.
"Since I was fourteen," I say. "Since that night." My voice comes out even. "Every day someone has told me what to wear. Juvenile programs. Feral Academy." The even starts to crack at the edges. I feel it going and hold it back. "Here is your uniform. Here is your schedule. Here is where you go. When you eat. What you're allowed to have."
My hands have stopped twisting. They're just open in my lap now, palms up, and I look at them.
"And now I'm here and there's no uniform and people are looking at me like I'm supposed to just—" The crack gets wider. I breathe through it and get myself back. "Choose. I'm supposed to just choose. And I don't know how because I've never—" I stop. Breathe. "I don't know who I am when nobody's telling me."
The room goes still around it.
Then the bed shifts behind me. Dalton moves closer. He doesn't touch me yet — just sits there, solid, close enough that I can feel the warmth of him without being closed in.
He lets it exist.
Then, quiet —
"Okay."
Not I know. Not you're fine. Not it gets easier.
Just that.
My shoulders drop a fraction.
"We don't start with everything," he says. "We start small."
I glance at him.
He's watching me the way he watches things — fully, without pressure, like I'm something worth figuring out and he has the time.
