It was gone almost immediately, swallowed by remembered anger, but I saw it.
I collected that almost-smile and kept it close.
“You’re impossible,” he’d muttered.
“I have been described as difficult.”
“By people who were being polite?”
“By Ben.”
“Then definitely polite.”
I did not smile, but something eased in my chest.
We stood before the moray system that afternoon, the tank casting wavering light over Cove’s face while he rested his weight on the crutch and kept his cuffed hand low between us. His ankle had improved enough that he could stand longer, though I monitored every shift of his posture. He noticed, because he noticed everything eventually, and had started glaring whenever my gaze dropped to his foot.
“I’m fine, Tobias. Stop staring at my feet.”
“You nearly fell off a cliff just days ago.”
“You keep bringing that up as if I did it for fun.”
“You ran toward it.”
“I was panicking because you killed someone.”
“Yes,” I said. “I recall.”
His jaw popped, and for a moment I thought I had ruined the fragile thread of conversation, but then he sighed through his nose and looked back at the tank.
“I hate when you do that.”
“What?”
“Say awful things like they’re normal.”
“They are normal to me.”
“That is not better, Tobias.”
“No,” I admitted. “I suppose it is not.”
Cove looked at me then, longer than he had intended.
I felt the difference. I always did.
His attention had changed over the past few week, not softened exactly, but shifted. Fear remained, anger remained, and betrayal had not lessened, but something else had begun moving beneath it, something I think he resented too much to name. He watched me sometimes as if trying to reconcile two incompatible animals sharing the same skin—the man who had frightened him to death and the man who brought him coffee and fussed over his bandages; the killer and the caretaker; the captor and the one who stood silently beside him for half an hour because the puffer made him feel less alone.
I did not know which version he would choose to see when the time came.
Perhaps all of them.
Perhaps that was the only way this could become honest.
His gaze returned to the moray tank.
“I used to free-dive,” he said suddenly, quiet enough that I almost thought I had imagined it.
