Page 75 of Reign

She stepped away, because Liam was right. They were friends. And they needed to keep it that way.

“Let me work a few more bartending shifts, and when I’ve saved enough, I’ll come get a mattress. You’ll bring me back, right?” Sam asked.

“Of course I’ll bring you back. Or you can borrow myCostco card and come without me,” he added, with a hint of a smile. “I know this is your new favorite place.”

“Ooh, can we get here on the metro? That’s another thing I’ve been wanting to do.”

At that, Liam laughed outright. “You’re excited about themetro?”

“I’ve never been on it! It’s too hard to manage with security,” Sam explained. “Beatrice always said it was creepy, disappearing down those long escalators underground like mole people. I thought it looked fun, though.”

“The metro is zero fun, but I’m happy to help you navigate it.” Liam’s eyes sparkled. “Anything else on your ordinary-people bucket list? Changing the oil in your car? Paying your insurance?”

“Seeing a movie in a theater,” Sam declared.

“Done.” Liam turned to wheel their cart toward the checkout aisle. “Okay, lesson number one in being a nobody: you always stop at the Costco food court on the way out. Soft serve in the summer, churros in the winter.”

A lesson in being a nobody. Sam thought of the little girl she’d just played volleyball with, and decided it wasn’t such a bad thing after all, being a nobody.

Beatrice glanced across the car at Teddy, a little nervous. She hadn’t felt like herself since she got back from Texas.

Perhaps she should say that she hadn’t felt like heroldself, the one she’d thought she was after the accident. Seeing Connor had answered plenty of her questions, but it also raised new ones. Beatrice had tried to ignore the sensation; she had enough on her plate without a post-amnesia identity crisis, including the whole mess with Samantha, whose cover had finally been blown at, of all places, a wholesale discount store.

But she couldn’t adequately face the rest of it until she knew where things stood with Teddy.

When she’d started composing a new text to him, her phone had filled the screen with their message history, and Beatrice’s thumbs paused.

The most recent text was from Teddy, the night before her accident:I can’t wait to see you.

Beatrice had scrolled upward and realized that he’d been in Nantucket for most of the League of Kings conference, sending the occasional picture of a sunset orNantucket’s not the same without younote.

Beatrice had kept going. It was hard to follow the thread of their conversation, because therewasno coherent thread. Most of their dialogue was composed of out-of-context declarations (so much for Russians never changing their minds—whatdid that mean?) or emojis that Beatrice couldn’t make sense of. It was the sort of text exchange that spoke of inside jokes and shorthand, of people who knew each other so well that they could communicate with easy intimacy.

She’d written and deleted a few different versions of her text to Teddy before finally settling onAre you free for dinner?

Which was how she ended up in the car with him, on her way to a Chinese restaurant that had opened just last month.

As if reading her mind, Teddy said, “When you told me you wanted to get dinner, I thought we were eating at the palace.”

“I want to go somewhere new.” Beatrice couldn’t take another interaction at the palace, where she’d done so many things she couldn’t remember. She wanted to see Teddy on neutral ground, somewhere neither of them had any memories.

Teddy glanced over. “Would you mind if we took a quick detour? There’s somewhere I want to take you. As a friend,” he added quickly.

She thought of that text thread, of all the months they had clearly spent being muchmorethan friends, and wondered what Teddy was thinking.

Truthfully, she could use a friend right now.

“Let’s do it,” she told him, and Teddy broke into an eager smile. He leaned forward to whisper with the Guard in the front seat.

They passed through the financial district and over the Armistead Bridge, then crawled up a hill on the far side of the Potomac. The tires crunched on fallen leaves as their driver backed into a spot.

Beatrice zipped her thin jacket up her torso, then walked hesitantly around the side of the car. They were at a lookout point above the river, the setting sun turning its waters a burnished gold. Past the river, the buildings of the capital were so crowded together that it seemed you could cross the entirecity like a hero in an action movie, jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

She glanced at the other parking spots, all empty. A protection officer had obviously radioed ahead to clear them out when Teddy requested this stop, but Beatrice couldn’t shake the sense that this was serendipitous, as if they’d just happened to stumble across this empty lookout point.

The current of restless energy that normally spun through her seemed to fall still.

“Have you been here before?” Teddy asked.