Page 204

Her expression changed. Not pity.

I would have moved if it had been.

“Is that why your record says you died?”

“Partly.”

She waited.

I felt the question she did not ask.

How?

Who found you?

What happened to everyone else?

She could have pushed.

She didn’t.

Her thumb moved once against the edge of the scar. “Later?”

I looked at her. “Later.”

This time, the word felt less like refusal.

More like a promise.

Talia’s fingertip traced the faint silver line along my wrist, her touch impossibly light. “You’re doing it again,” she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep.

I didn’t look away from the door. “What?”

“Watching the exit. You haven’t stopped looking that way since we lay down.”

I hadn’t realized—not consciously—but she was right. My body was always half-turned toward potential entry points, even now.

“I can see it from here,” I said, a weak deflection.

“That wasn’t my point,” she replied softly, shifting closer until her bare shoulder pressed against my arm.

Heat spread where our skin met.

I should have moved away—created distance, maintained alertness—but I didn’t.

There was something dangerously intimate about lying still beside someone, allowing stillness to become a shared condition.

Not tactically unsound.

Personally disarming.

My body had never learned the difference between vigilance and intimacy.

To it, they often felt the same.

Talia’s breathing slowed, her head heavy against my shoulder.

I thought she might sleep.