"Hey."
He leans against the railing beside me, facing the glass doors instead of the garden. His eyes keep moving past my shoulder to the interior of the house.
"So." He exhales. Rubs the back of his neck. "I don't want to make this weird."
"You're already making it weird. Just say it."
A pause. Then, quieter. "I don't think your boyfriend likes me, Vi."
I wince. As much as I want to reassure him that isn't true, I've started to consider that option as well.
"I mean..." His jaw works. "He watches me constantly. Not the way he watches everyone. That I can handle. I've had principals with less intimidating energy and that's saying something, because my department chair once made a grown man cry over a parking space." The joke falls flat and he knows it. He lets it die. "This is different. This is... weird."
My fingers tighten around the railing. The iron is cold and rough under my palms.
"I know what he is, Violet. I know what men like him do when they decide someone's a problem." His voice is low, but his eyes keep doing that thing, the constant tracking, the doorway check. "I'm not trying to cause trouble. I just..."
"You're not causing trouble."
"I think I should leave. Like, as soon as possible."
"You're not going anywhere," I say. "I'll talk to him."
"Vi..."
"He knows how important you are to me. He knows what you did. What you gave up." My voice is steady. My chest is not. "He's just... this is how he processes. He controls things. It's what he does. But I have a say in this, and I'm saying you stay."
Matt looks at me. That warm, open, average face that is the opposite of everything Elio is. Kind eyes. The only kind eyes in the compound.
"Especially now that Elena..." I stop.
Just. Stop. Like someone cut the wire. Because there's no way to finish it that doesn't rip the wound back open, that doesn't make it real again, that doesn't put me back in that room where she sat with dead eyes and told me some cages never open, and she was right, she was right, and now she's...
Matt's hand closes around mine on the railing.
He doesn't push. Doesn't fill the silence. Doesn't offer a Shakespeare quote or a bad joke or any of the tools in his kit. He just waits. Holds my hand and waits for me to come back from wherever the sentence took me.
I breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way Elena taught me in the compound, which is a thing I can never think about without...
"Just." My voice is stripped down to nothing. "You're staying. That's all."
Elio isin the study when I look for him that night. Papers spread across the desk, the lamp throwing warm light across his hands. I don't want to fight. I just want to understand and maybe explain my side.
He looks up when I walk in, his eyes softening at the edges.
"Violet." He almost smiles.
I try not to wring my hands and fail miserably.
"Do you not like Matt?" I blurt out.
Elio tilts his head, studying my posture, the nerves clearly showing on my face and sets his pen down, leaning back in his chair and patting his lap for me to come sit.
I do, because I need his warmth to hear whatever he's going to tell me.
"He concerns me."
"He's a high school teacher from Connecticut."
