The shoelace isn’t as good for my fidgety habit as the length of woven cord I kept in my room at the facility, not quite slick enough to unravel quickly, but it keeps the restless itch at bay.
Soft strains of music start to filter through the open window. Someone in one of the townhouses nearby is blaring an upbeat pop song, like they’re trying to pep up the neighborhood.
And Riva begins to sway.
At first, I can’t say it’s a definite motion and not just my imagination as I tune into the beat. But the gentle rocking of her torso becomes a little more pronounced, so it’s obvious she’s absorbing the music.
I can’t tell whethersherealizes she’s moving with it. Her gaze is still focused on the glossy magazine pages.
Then her head tips a little to one side and the other, forming a more complex rhythm separate from her shoulders. Her chin bobs a little with the beat.
All at once, her eyes leap to the window. She stiffens abruptly, as if she’s worried some horrible backlash is about to descend on her.
She gets up and shuts the window. When she flops on the bed again, she holds herself perfectly, rigidly still.
My gut twists. I remember now—catching glimpses of her here and there when we’d have a TV show or a movie on with a prominent soundtrack, or when the guardians pumped music into the training room while we exercised. Little moments when she’d slip into the melody with a few graceful motions.
Her momentary lapse with the music is the only thing I’ve seen during this stint of spying that’s at all different from how she’s been behaving around the rest of us. The only time she hasn’t seemed totally self-aware and controlled.
I’m still turning that fact over in my mind when the lock rasps in the door and Zian calls in to Riva that it’s dinner time. He pulls the door wide, as planned, and I hustle out ahead of her.
By the time she makes it down to the first floor, I’m helping dish out the pasta the others managed to cook, every part of me as opaque as it’s meant to be.
I glance over my shoulder at her with a grin to cover a twinge of guilt. “How hungry are you, Tink?”
It’s like an unexpected gift, the way her expression softens just slightly when I use her old nickname, taking her from pretty to ethereal. My heart skips a beat.
I have to be careful I don’t start expecting that gift—or enjoying it too much. It’s when you assume you know how things are going to go that everything turns upside down.
“Just a little,” she says, sinking into the chair that’s become hers. “But it smells good.”
She offers me a quick smile in return, because she’s assumingIcooked it rather than spending the last two hours studying her in secret.
“I think Dominic deserves most of the credit for that,” I admit, and bump the other guy lightly with my elbow as he grabs his plate. I get a small smile out of him too, so that’s a double victory for the meal.
The fact thatIcan still smile as much as I do shows the difference in how the past few years have hit us. It’s hardly been a laugh riot for me, and I’ve felt Griffin’s absence every single day, but I know nothing I’ve been through compares to the worst of what the other guys have faced.
If I can distract them a little from the burdens they’re carrying, at least I’m helping in some small way.
Zian needs it too. He digs into his pasta enthusiastically enough, but when Riva leans past him to grab the salt, her arm almost brushing his knuckles, I catch the slight tensing of his shoulders. The tick in his jaw before he starts chewing again.
The flicker of uneasiness in his eyes.
No, I’m definitely not the only one feeling the draw of Riva’s presence—but I can’t even begin to imagine all the turmoil it’ll have stirred up in him, after… everything.
“I told Dom to fry an extra package of ground beef for the sauce just for you, Zee!” I call over to him from my armchair perch.
He rolls his eyes at me, but his expression softens with resigned amusement. The teeniest of tiny victories.
Maybe if I keep trying, I’ll eventually stumble on a larger one.
We’re just finishing eating when there’s a knock on the door. All five of us stiffen, our heads jerking toward the front of the townhouse.
When no armed guardians follow up the knock by bashing the door right off its hinges or smashing through the windows, I chuckle and get up, setting my mostly empty plate on the table. It isn’t as if an enemy would knock first anyway.
I open the door to find the girl from the next building over—Brooke, that’s her name—waiting on the front steps. She offers me a sunny smile, but her gaze flicks past me toward the room beyond as if she’s searching for something.
“Is Rita here?” she asks. “A bunch of us are going out—I thought she might like to come with.”