“To alert the staff that you're coming back,” she says.
“There is no whistle,” Parker says.
The feel of eyes on me makes my skin crawl. Then a flicker of movement catches my attention but it's gone before I can focus on it. “Why wouldn't you attack?” I ask her. “Why give yourself up like this?”
“I don't like this game,” she says, eyes trained on the darkness between the trees. “The rules are strange. They don't make sense. I don't like the collars. This isn't beneficial and it isn't healing anything. I don't care how it looks if you capture me. It doesn't matter. Something bad will happen if we don't go back right now.”
Parker and I exchange another look but he ultimately shrugs and lifts his hand toward the buildings that make up the Recovery campus. “After you.”
Our trek back to the courtyard is closely watched. We pass two staff members who I don't recognize on the way. They both nod as if they expected to see us. Eugenia doesn't say anything else the whole way until we get back to the courtyard.
“I'm not participating in another hunt like this. Something about it...” she trails off, glancing around us like someone might be listening. “I don't know how long I'm staying here.” Then she walks away in Parker's shirt, leaving us to stare after her.
“We're staying in your room tonight,” I tell Parker and he nods. There are no rules against it, not really, and even if there were we would still be sleeping in his room. I am entirely too on edge right now.
Part of me even wants to go get Eugenia and keep her with us tonight even though it's a terrible idea and she'd probably refuse anyway because she's right. The hunt felt strange from the start. The collars. The concept. The bizarre rules. It all seems so unnecessary, and dangerous. She'll be alright. We can't possibly be the only ones who feel like things are off here. She'll be okay.
When we get back to Parker's room he puts on a clean shirt and lays back on his bed. I sit on the foot of it and take off his shoes before toeing off my own. Even though it's been so long since we've been with each other like this, it's so easy to fall into our old habits. He never cared about putting his shoes on the bed and I couldn't stand it, so it became standard practice for me to get rid of the shoes before laying down with him. But now I feel like I'm stuck in limbo. He's been gone a long time and the most time we've had to spend like this is a few scattered minutes over the past two weeks.
“She has my shirt,” Parker announces.
Yes. That's the biggest problem in front of us right now. The fact that Eugenia Barrett is wearing his shirt is at the top of his list.
“Do you need it right now?” I ask, twisting back to look at him.
He gives me a flat look. “I don't need it back at all.”
“I tried to give her mine.”
His eyes narrow. “That would be worse.”
I turn all the way around to smirk at him. “Would it?”
He rolls his eyes.
Fuck it. I crawl up and lay down next to him. I can feel his warmth seeping into me and it's so good that I just lay there for a while. I can't relax, though. Too many things are spinning around in my mind, most of them having to do with Eugenia.
“I can feel you thinking,” Parker says.
I let out a halfhearted laugh. “There's a lot to think about.”
He nods. “No more hunts, Cross. Something bad will happen.”
“No more hunts,” I agree. “I can't see the point if they're like tonight. If it's just a regular hunt, sure, but nothing like tonight.”
“I've been thinking,” he says after a few minutes. “What did we know about Recovery before we agreed to come here? Like, what did wereallyknow? Do you know anyone who has been through the program? Have you actually talked to anyone with experience about it?”
That gives me pause. Recovery has been around since before I was born. Everyone talks about it. Everyone knows what it is. But I don't know a single person who has physically been here. “No. But people obviously come here. People are here now.”
A lot more people than I anticipated seeing, to be perfectly honest.
“Right,” he says and falls back into silence.
I can agonize over the things I don't know about Recovery all night, but it won't change anything. I'm still here, and I came for a reason. I don't have to participate in anything that isn't absolutely required. The hunts and Middle Ground aren't requirements. They're supposed to be recreational ways to burn off the stress we build up over the course of the week. What Icanagonize over is Eugenia.“Hey,” I say.
“What?”
Bracing myself, I ask about the thing I shouldn't even be thinking about. “You didn't tell me she was so...” I stop talkingwithout finishing the sentence. What can I say that doesn't make me sound stupid and wouldn't make him feel inadequate?
