Sydney felt the unfairness of it all flood her limbs until her fingers tingled. She glanced again at the family by the checkout counter. Then, through her film of tears, she looked at the goods on the aisle in front of her. Vitamins. Cold medicine. Allergy sprays.
She didn’t know exactly why the urge hit her, or why she didn’t bother stopping it. Maybe she was just tired of everyone else getting to have what they wanted. Maybe she was tired of grieving, of being left behind, of being trapped.
Maybe this was to balance out the unfairness.
Whatever the reason, she reached out and grabbed one of the bottles of allergy medicine and shoved it into the inner pocket of her coat.
Her hand was there and gone in less than a second.
She could feel the round bottle pressing against her side. It felt amazing. Her heart hammered as she glanced toward the clerks, who didn’t even seem to notice she was here.
She snatched a case of aspirin.
Snatched two boxes of nasal spray.
Then she shoved her hands in her pockets and headed back out toward the entrance.
She expected the alarms to go off. But then the glass doors slid open for her. She stepped through, the homeless people shifting on either side of the entrance. No alarm.
She walked stiffly, fear lodged in her throat, waiting for the sound of a clerk yelling at her to stop. Her hands were clammy with cold sweat in her pockets, and her teeth were chattering.
But no one came running after her. She turned the corner, and no one came. She crossed the street and went another block, and no one came.
The crushing anguish that pressed against her heart suddenly gave way to a tide of nauseating euphoria. The stolen medication tucked inside her heavy coat bounced against her side, pills clinking in their bottles.
Goddamn, that feltso good.
Her teeth chattered from the rush. She hated herself.
But more than that, she knew she would rather hate herself than bear the pain a second longer.
And she knew she would do everything in her power to steal again.
Sydney shot up in bed, gasping, her body prickling with sweat, her hands still tingling from the rush of her theft. Tears smeared her vision. Shelooked around wildly, wondering if she’d heard a noise, if the cops were waiting outside for her. If she’d see the rhythmic flash of blue and red lights by the window. But her room stayed empty.
She wasn’t back in Havenville. She wasn’t reliving her mother’s death and the start of her shoplifting. She was just in Kensington, on the night before their mission was supposed to kick into high gear.
But her stomach still churned with sickness, a concoction of grief and anger.
After another long moment, Sydney pulled herself into a sitting position and buried her face in her palms, then wiped her tears away. Moonlight poured across her bed in a diagonal band, outlining her figure and mess of hair in weak blue light. She wished she could call Sauda or Niall, as if their guidance could once again steer her out of the darkness of her own mind.
The sound of a creak in the floorboards snapped her out of her reverie. She turned her head automatically in the direction of the wall. She had heard that sound in her dream right before waking up—the groan of the floor. That must have been what woke her up.
After a moment came the faintest thud of footsteps downstairs. Winter was awake.
Sydney swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up silently, then moved like a cat across the room to her door, where she pulled it open by the faintest hair. Over the curving stairway, she saw Winter walking around downstairs, barefoot. He was still dressed in his nightclothes, a plain white shirt and gray sleep pants that hung low at his hips, so that when he reached up to run his hand through his mess of hair, he revealed a sliver of his slanting hip bones.
Annoyance and desire flitted through her. She found herself watching him quietly from above. What was he doing awake at this hour, anyway? He stopped to stare out the window for a long time, the moonlight stretching his shadow long behind him. Then he turned away, handstucked in his pant pockets, and did little sweeps with his feet in half arcs as if he were slow dancing across the floor with himself.
She looked on, hypnotized by the quiet grace of his body. As he moved, he tilted his head up slightly and, with his eyes closed, maneuvered his turns into an effortless pirouette, spinning in silence on one perfectly arched foot, his hands still in his pockets. Her lips parted, and in this moment, she forgot herself.Ballet training,she recalled about him. Then his leg dropped again and he stepped smoothly back into a walk.
There was sadness etched into the lines of his body tonight, something she occasionally recognized from his performances. It gave him that secret pull, an aching vulnerability hidden behind the wink and the sidelong smile. As if he both desperately needed the spotlight and yet couldn’t bear the attention. There was no one else here, and yet, even now, he looked like a star, like he couldn’t help but burn so bright that even the air was drawn to him, that the moon yearned to illuminate him.
Sydney didn’t know how long she watched him. And when he finally retreated back up the stairs and she settled into her bed again, she could still see his lonely, mesmerizing dance in her mind, his figure glowing in the darkness.
Maybe his dreams had come to haunt him tonight, too.
14
