Brooke’s frown doesn’t go away. “Fights about what?”
I shrug. “Who would win. Don’t worry. It was always me!”
I whirl around and laugh at the exhilaration of the movement. Brooke scoots over so we’re facing each other again.
“Are you in any kind of trouble, Rita?” she asks with that serious expression.
I don’t want her to look like that. Brooke is nice—Brooke should be happy. It was her idea for me to come here, and I’m having such a good time.
“No trouble,” I assure her with a broad grin. “I left all the trouble behind.”
“If there’s anything—”
Fingers close around my elbow from behind. I turn to see Andreas standing over me, his usual warm smile looking a tad tense.
Is he getting serious too? What is up with people tonight? I thought we all came here to have some fun.
“Hey,” he says, and directs his smile at Brooke for just a second before returning his attention to me. “You lost your hoodie.”
“It was too hot,” I inform him.
A little furrow forms in his forehead. “Well, I think you’re going to want it later. Let’s have a look and see if we can rescue it.”
I pump my fist in the air. “It’s a mission!”
Andreas tugs me away from Brooke and her friends, but instead of prowling through the mass of dancers searching for my wayward hoodie, he pulls me right over to the far wall where the whoops and chatter of the other dancers don’t drown out our voices quite so much.
“How much have you had to drink?” he asks me, looking me up and down.
I do a little shimmy, wondering if I can get him to point the same flirty grin at me that he did for the other woman. “Just one. It was good!”
Andreas’s expression only gets more serious, which is absolutely the wrong direction. “Maybe we should head home.”
“What?” I protest. “No. We just got here, like, five seconds ago. I’m having fun.”
He quirks an eyebrow at me, which at least brings back a bit of his normal easygoing vibe. “Are you really?”
I plant my hands on my hips. “Yes. Tons. I haven’t been able to dance since—even when I was alone in my new room, there were the shackles, and I didn’t like thinking about the boss watching—but now I don’t care! I didn’t realize it could be this much fun to dancewithother people.”
I don’t know how to describe Andreas’s expression anymore. He looks kind of like he isn’t any more sure what he’s doing with his face than I am.
With a surge of boldness, I tap him right on his toned chest. “Why don’tyoudance with me?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he says dryly.
I grimace at him. “Why not? We could have fun together. We used to.”
A sudden melancholy sweeps over me, dragging my spirits down into the toilet. I glance at my arm again, at the scars Brooke noticed and the smaller ones near my armpit.
“I always needed to be sure, you know,” I say, running my fingers over the lines carved by my claws. “Bring out a little puff of the smoky stuff to make sure it still pointed toward the rest of you. That you were still out there somewhere.”
Andreas’s throat bobs with a thick swallow, and I’m abruptly captivated by that motion, my previous thoughts flitting away. I step closer to him and touch his neck.
“Riva,” he says roughly.
“I really am so glad I found you,” I tell him, and tip my head so it rests on his shoulder.
Some distant part of me expects him to shove me away, but the rest of me doesn’t care. And that isn’t what happens anyway.