"How long have you been in the book club you were telling me about?"
Emily blinked. "About two years? Chloe started it. We all met through a Facebook group for women who liked—" She paused. "Romance novels. Specific kinds of romance novels."
Savannah looked at her with an expression that said she knew exactly whatspecific kindsmeant and was not going to make it weird.
"I like those books too," Savannah said simply. "That's how I found out more about myself. About a lot of us.” She gestured vaguely at the room. At the compound. At herself, curled up on a couch in a Watchmen hoodie eating chips at noon like she'd grown up here.
"Was it scary?" Emily asked. "In the beginning?"
"The scary part wasn't the dynamic. The scary part was admitting I wanted it." She popped a chip in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "You spend so long telling yourself it's just something you like toread,you know? Like it's fine to want it in a book because that's safe. The second you admit you want it for real, it's—" She made an exploding gesture with her hand.
Emily stared at the middle distance.
"Terrifying," she said.
"Terrifying," Savannah agreed. "And then, when you actually have it—" She stopped. Smiled, private and certain. "Different kind of terrifying. The good kind. The best kind."
Emily looked down at Clover's head on her knee. Ran her thumb through the soft fur between his ears and thought about the books she'd read. The highlighted passages. The thing she and Chloe, drunk on wine, talked about. Like, someone to justhandle it. Handle her.
"I don't know what I want," she said. Which was a lie. She knew exactly what she wanted. What she didn't know was what to do with that information.
Savannah looked at her with the patience of someone who'd told herself the same lie and remembered doing it.
"That's okay," she said. "You don't have to know right now."
Across the room, Rampage closed his laptop, picked up his coffee, and walked over.
Emily felt him before she heard him, that specific atmospheric change, the particular quality of attention that arrived with him. Her heart beat faster when he was near. He stopped at the end of the couch.
"Need to talk to you," he said. "When you're ready."
"I'm ready now."
He glanced at Savannah.
"I'm invisible," Savannah said, eating another chip.
"Meeting room," he said, ignoring that. "Five minutes."
He left.
Savannah waited approximately three seconds. "He's never once told anyone to meet him in five minutes. He either talks to you now or he schedules it on the calendar."
"Maybe he wanted to let me finish my—" Emily looked down. She didn't have a drink. "Whatever I was doing."
"Emily."
"Don't."
"I'm just saying."
"Savannah."
"He literally reorganized his schedule to give you five minutes to finish chatting with me. He doesn’t do that. He demands your attention right away when he wants something." She popped another chip in her mouth. "That's basically a sonnet coming from him."
Emily stood up. Clover lifted his head, offended.
"Sorry, baby," she told the dog.
