Page 29

James

Chapter 29

When we finally sit down to eat, we sit across from each other, and it occurs to me that I’ve only made the situation worse. Suddenly we’re only a couple feet apart. I can see shades of blue in her gray eyes. The gentle slope of her nose, the satin finish of her skin. Suddenly I’m staring at her mouth.

Mentally, I punch myself in the face.

“I can come here whenever I want?” she asks, eyes on her tray. There’s a single plate in front of her, and on it, a single apple.

Practically nothing, but it still feels like a win.

She stood in front of the sandwiches for so long it nearly killed me. She’d reach out, then retract her hand. Reach out, then retract her hand.

Like she was afraid of something.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to remember what she’d asked me. I spear a small tomato in my salad. I don’t even know what’s in this salad. I just grabbed it so I’d have something to do. “Yeah, uh, you can come here whenever you want. Well, I mean, during dining hours, but yeah.” I nod at a sign on a nearby wall with the hours listed. “You can’t take food back to your room, though. That’s the only thing. Sometimes people hoard stuff, and then things go bad, and then”— I shrug, popping the tomato in my mouth—“it gets gross.”

She picks up her apple, and I notice, not for the first time, that her right hand trembles a little. I remember what Warner said about the scar inside her forearm, but she’s wearing long sleeves, so I can’t—

She bites into the apple.

She bites into the apple and her eyes close, and then she makes a tiny sound of pleasure in the back of her throat that messes me up so badly I have to put down my fork.

No. Never mind. I should definitely keep the fork, keep myself busy. I need to not be thinking about the look on her face or this deeply inappropriate, primal feeling of satisfaction in my chest. She’d seemed so overwhelmed going through the buffet line that I figured it was a bad idea to pressure her to eat more than she was ready to eat—especially after yesterday. I’m just so happy she’s eating something. I’m so happy she’s comfortable enough to eat something in front of me . These are weird thoughts to be having about a serial killer.

“So, uh, things you should know,” I say, spearing another tomato. “The people who come through here have already served prison sentences. They’ve been judged and vetted and cleared for this program. This is the last phase of calibration before they’re allowed to reenter society. What else? Um, you have to attend all the meetings—”

“You give free food to people who went to prison?”

I look up, surprised at her sharp tone, my fork halfway to my mouth. I set down the fork. “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, we feed people in prison, too, obviously.”

“Oh.”

She puts down the apple and looks away from me, her eyes darting around. She clasps her hands, her thumb rubbing circles into the opposite palm as she searches the room. I wonder whether she realizes she’s self-soothing right in front of me.

“Why does that upset you?” I ask.

She jerks back to me, her eyes bright, stunned, pow , ow. “I didn’t say it upset me.”

“You didn’t have to,” I point out. “It makes you sad that we feed people in prison. You’ve got sad feelings about it.”

“How would you know that?”

“I mean.” I gesture at her face with my fork. “It’s obvious.”

“It’s not obvious. Why are you saying it’s obvious?”

“Okay,” I say, laughing a little. I spear my tomato again. “Now you’re mad.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Definitely mad.”

“ Stop saying that. ”

I’m picking through my salad, searching for another tomato when I say, “Now you’re scared.”

“Stop it,” she says, loudly this time. “Stop it right now.”

“Stop what?”

“ I said stop ,” she cries.

I look up, food half-chewed, and freeze. I’ve literally never heard her raise her voice before. Rosabelle looks genuinely terrified, and now I’m confused.

“Do you— Are you—” She’s flushed, still searching the room in sharp, erratic motions. “Are you—”

“Am I what?”

“Can you”—she swallows, stares at me—“can you see into my head?”

“What?” I laugh, relaxing. Stab a piece of lettuce. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you connected, too?” she says, and she sounds angry. “Are they watching me right now?”

Okay, fork goes down again.

“Rosabelle, I realize The Reestablishment has seriously messed with your mind, but I swear I’m not seeing into your head. I mean”—I shrug—“look, okay, I guess in some ways you can call it seeing into someone’s head, but it’s not—”

“So it’s true.” She physically backs away from me, her chair screeching as she pushes away from the table. “They aren’t in my room because they’re in you .”

“Who?” I shoot back. “What are you talking about? Why are you freaking out right now?”

“I’m not freaking out,” she says sharply.

“Clearly.” I roll my eyes.

“If you’re not seeing into my head,” she says, “how can you know what I’m feeling?”

“Because I’m a human being?”

“No.”

I raise my eyebrows. I can’t fight my smile. “You’re just”—I wave a hand—“rejecting my answer?”

“Why are you laughing at me?”

“I’m not laughing at you,” I say to her. “But I think it’s interesting that this is sending you into such a panic.”

“I’m not panicking,” she says, color rising in her face.

I blow out a breath. Really struggle to fight back that smile. Nope, I can’t help it. The laugh just leaves my body.

This really pisses her off.

Happy cat is long gone.

“Um. Yeah, look,” I say. “Just because you say something, doesn’t make it true. You know that, right?” I gesticulate with my fork. “You can’t just say, look, I’m invisible, and suddenly it’s true.” Well, except for Kenji.

“I don’t like it when you laugh at me.”

“I know,” I say. “It makes you mad. You think I’m not taking you seriously.”

Her eyes widen. Stunned. Pow . Happy cat is back.

“Except, I do take you seriously,” I say to her. “You just think it requires, like, magic or something in order to see into someone’s head—”

“Not magic.” She cuts me off. “It’s extremely advanced science. Cutting-edge technology.”

“What is?”

“The Nexus.”

“Right, obviously,” I say, super calm, even though inside I’ve just burst a blood vessel, had a heart attack, and died.

What the hell is the Nexus?

Oh my God, Warner is going to flip. Right? Or wait, does he already know what the Nexus is? Shit, he probably already knows what the Nexus is.

Maybe this was not a big reveal.

I keep going: “But there are other ways to connect with people.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” I say, popping a piece of lettuce into my mouth. “Like, just paying attention. I pay attention to you.”

She turns pink. Almost all of her turns pink. It’s fucking adorable. I want to die.

“I pay attention to you, too,” she says quietly.

I sit straight up at that, my brain cells in a panic, all of them running around shouting what the hell does that mean at the same time.

A poorly edited version of this question leaves my mouth: “What?”

She seems calmer now, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t need technology to understand you, either.”

“Whoa, wait.” I hold up a hand. “Look, I wasn’t threatening you. I was just trying to explain—”

“You think you’re so mysterious—”

“No, I don’t—”

“Well, you’re not,” she says sharply. “You’re not mysterious. Your methods are obvious. You rely on veils of distraction, using humor and charm to cast yourself as a hapless, incapable opponent, only to then slaughter your enemies as if it costs you nothing. You pretend to be reckless when you’re not. You pretend to be weak when you’re not. You pretend to be stupid when you’re not. You live by some impenetrable moral code, deciding at your own discretion whether something is worth dying for, and then act as if your sacrifice means nothing. You feign boredom even when you’re paying attention. You smile even when you’re angry—especially when you’re angry.” She leans in. “You’re a liar. Deep down, you don’t think this world is funny. Deep down, you’re simmering with rage. You think I can’t see straight through you? You live your life as if nothing can hurt you even though your body is covered in scars.”

These words detonate inside me.

The result is a mess: my heart is beating out of my chest; my head is surging with heat. I want to go back to the person I was five minutes ago. It’s like my rib cage has been split open, like a magician just pulled the organs out of my body and is now tossing them into a jeering crowd.

Jesus. I can’t stop staring at her.

Rosabelle is sitting back in her seat, looking at me with those slow, sleepy eyes, and I’m so arrested in the moment I can hardly make out anything beyond her head. I’m not even mad that she just tore me to pieces. No woman has ever stripped me bare like that. Hell, no woman has ever studied me with this level of intensity, and the longer our eyes hold the harder my heart beats.

I want to know what else she thinks of me.

I want to know what she’s thinking right now. I want to know what other things she’s hiding behind those strange eyes; she’s clearly keeping all kinds of secrets. And I don’t even realize I’m staring at her like a prepubescent teenager until I drop my fork and the metal clatters, startling me.

I swallow. Sit back in my seat.

Fuck. This is bad.

It takes me a second, but I finally reset my head, find my voice. I clear my throat and say, “That was, um, really mean.”

“What?” She recoils in surprise. “No, it wasn’t.”

“It was,” I say, picking up my fallen fork. “You hurt my feelings. I think you should apologize.”

Her eyes widen. She actually seems to consider this, and the split second she spends weighing her options tells me everything I need to know about this girl.

When she sees me fighting a laugh, she goes rigid with outrage.

“You just did it again,” she says. “You’re such a liar—”

“Listen,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m going to take a wild guess here and assume you don’t have a clue how to have a normal, polite conversation. I’m guessing the serial killer life didn’t teach you how to be casual. It probably wasn’t the relaxing stress reliever you thought it would be when you first signed up for the job—”

“I didn’t sign up for it,” she says, cutting me off.

“Okay.”

“I was born into it.”

Now it’s my turn to go very still. The Nexus thing was maybe not a big deal, but this feels important. I keep my eyes on my food, reintroducing motion a little at a time. I pick at the lettuce slowly, keep my shoulders loose. Wait for her to fill the silence.

“I wouldn’t have chosen this life,” she says. “It was what my parents wanted for me.”

Yes. Okay. This is good.

Horrible. Objectively horrible , but good intel.

Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Warner will know what to do with this information, but I understand enough about the classist hierarchy of The Reestablishment to know that, if Rosabelle’s parents chose this path for her, she must’ve come from a rich family. When the parents choose the profession, they pay for it, and they start the kids young. Which means Warner was right. She’s been trained in this since childhood. Rosabelle is probably some kind of super-high-class mercenary. That would explain the fancy wedding invitation to the fancy douchebag. Except—

What about her sister? Why was she in that weird, shitty cottage? Why have they been starving her?

Wait a second. Where the hell are her parents?

There’s a lot to think about here, but I intentionally ignore the bombshell so as not to draw attention to it. “Right,” I say, “so, you’re proving my point—”

“Hiiiii, Rosabelle No-last-name! Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle!”

I hear him before I see him, looking up just as the next-door shithead slams his tray down on our table.

My first instinct is to be angry, but when I get a good look at his face I realize there’s something wrong with him.

He looks—drunk?

That can’t be right. Alcohol isn’t allowed here.

“My beautiful rose, I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to see you,” he says, slurring a little. “You’re a rose, my rosy rose.” He drops himself into the chair next to Rosabelle, then lunges at her so quickly I only have enough time to jump out of my chair before I hear his bloodcurdling scream.

Rosabelle pulls her fork out of his neck, carefully wipes it on a napkin, and picks up her apple.

Shithead is gurgling blood. He’s grasping at his neck, pawing at the wound, and I can see that she didn’t just stab him with the fork, she ripped his throat open a little, too.

“What do we do with our trays?” she asks, pushing away from the table. She’s giving me that look again.

Happy cat, sleepy eyes.