Cold presses in around us but I don't move. He doesn't move. There's nowhere else either of us needs to be and we both know it and neither of us is pretending otherwise.
Eventually we both pull back.
My eyes are wet. I press the back of my hand to them and turn toward Dalton and grab the front of his jacket.
"Did you do this," I say into his chest.
He looks at me, then at Gray. His jaw moves — putting it together in real time.
"If you keep holding me like that," he says, "I definitely made it happen."
I make a sound that's half laugh, half something else entirely.
"But no," he says. "I don't have that kind of pull here. Not yet." A pause. "Ask Lumi."
Gray puts his hand on my shoulder from behind. Warm. Steady. I look up at him and whatever my face is doing, he sees it and his jaw loosens by a fraction.
I turn back to Dalton. "Jon," I say. "We’re not done. But Gray hijacked my brain."
Dalton looks at Gray. Gray looks at Dalton.
"Later," Dalton says.
Gray falls into step beside me as we walk.
"I have been meeting all Gold House requirements," he says. "I’m here on a conditional transfer. Weekdays here, weekends back at Feral Academy." A beat. "Probably Lumi’s doing."
***
Gray gets coffee and eggs and finds the window table and sits across from me and the morning settles around us. Dalton takes a chair at the edge of the table. The three of us exist in the same space and it works.
"What’s your schedule?," I say to Gray.
"PE this morning." He looks at me over his coffee. "Writing 101 after. Then the library — Cal set up online coursework from Feral. Independent study until the panel clears the full academic track." A pause. "I test in next week."
"We have PE and Writing 101 together," I say.
"Yes."
"Probably too much to hope we had everything together."
His mouth pulls. "Probably."
***
PE is different with Gray in it.
We work through the circuits on opposite sides of the floor and I'm aware of him the whole time — his bond a low steady warmth at the edge of my attention, the frequency of him that I've been feeling at a distance for days now present and close and real. Midway through the session Gray moves into the climbing wall sequence and Coach Reeves stops calling corrections and watches him work instead. The way he moves up the wall is efficient and unhurried, no wasted motion, the same economy he brings to everything. Coach Reeves watches for a long moment with the expression of someone revising an assumption.
Then she moves on without saying anything.
Gray drops from the wall and his eyes find mine across the room. Not a look that needs anything from me. Just checking. Just confirming the bond's signal with the actual fact of me.
I look back. Same.
We finish the circuits.
After class we're in the corridor and Gray checks the time.
