"You don't have to decide everything now," he says. "You just have to decide yes or no when you see it."
The sheet is soft under my fingers. My hands are still in my lap. The lamp is throwing its warm light and outside the window the trees are dark and the bonds are running west and somewhere in this cottage Dalton has a room with a bed and a bag and nothing personal and he is sitting on the edge of minetalking about colors like it's the most important conversation he's had today.
Maybe it is.
"I get to choose," I say.
His gaze holds mine. "Yeah," he says. "You do."
Something settles.
"Okay," I say.
He doesn't move right away. He stays there on the edge of the bed in the low light and I stay there with the sheet around my shoulders and we let the quiet be what it is — not empty, not charged, just the specific quiet of two people who have said the thing that needed saying and don't need to add to it.
Then he lays back down. Come here.
"Get some sleep," he says. Low. Even.
He settles me against him and I pull the blanket up. The window faces the trees. Outside, the dark holds everything I'm not allowed to touch yet — the pack, the distance, RJ somewhere in it.
I close my eyes and let his heartbeat and the bond lull me until sleep takes me.
Chapter four
Alex
The clothes are folded on the chair when I wake up.
I lie there looking at them for a moment, then get up.
Not all new. Most of it has been worn and washed and worn again — soft in the right places, broken in without being tired. Good taste, close to my size, nothing institutional about any of it. A few pieces still have tags. I turn a henley over in my hands and think about Dalton making calls in the dark while I was asleep, whoever picked up, whatever that conversation looked like.
I put it down and keep going.
Black. I keep coming back to black. Not grey — black is a different thing entirely, black is chosen. A shirt that fits across my shoulders without pulling. Jeans that move when I move, dark and close. I pull the boots on last, lace them up, stand straight.
Yes. That.
Under all of it, the blue set. Dalton's blue, the one that's almost violet, soft against my skin, and nobody in that building is going to know about it and that's exactly the point.
I find the make-up in a bag on the counter. Mascara, foundation, blush, eye liner, moisturizer, lip gloss. This is too much, I zip up the bag. Then stop. Open it up, grab the lip gloss and close it.
I love my clothes, the rest can wait.
I look at myself in the small mirror above the bathroom sink. Someone looks back who doesn't look like a resident.
I pick up my campus map and go.
***
The dining hall is warmer than yesterday, or maybe I'm just more prepared for it. I get coffee and eggs and find the table near the window, the one that faces the treeline, and I eat and let the morning happen around me.
Dalton is somewhere behind me. I don't look for him — I feel the bond running warm and know he's there, close enough that nothing gets past him, far enough that nobody watching would connect us. Two days in and we've already found the rhythm of it without discussing it.
The room fills. Students in clusters, loud near the center, quieter at the edges. Someone laughing too hard at something. Someone else with headphones already somewhere else.
I'm eating eggs in a dining hall and nobody is watching me for signs of instability and I'm wearing black jeans that fit and there is coffee in my hand.
