Chapter 7
Beckett
She’s gone and I haven’t moved.
The hallway swallowed her up thirty seconds ago, maybe longer, and I’m still in the chair with my book closed on my lap like I’m waiting for something. I don’t know what. Permission to breathe, maybe.
She stepped toward me.
I keep coming back to that. Not the way she looked—though that’s there too, silver-blonde and pale-eyed and so thin it made something in my chest ache—but the way her weight shifted. Toward me. One step she didn’t mean to take before she caught herself.
I’ve spent my whole life watching people.
Learning what the small movements mean—the ones they don’t know they’re making.
The way someone angles their body toward the door when they want to leave.
The way hands curl into fists before a word gets said.
The way eyes flick to the most dangerous person in a room, even when they’re pretending not to notice.
She did that with Locke. Tracked him without looking. Flinched when Vaelor moved too fast. Went rigid when Kyron wouldn’t stop staring.
But when she looked at me, her shoulders dropped.
I don’t know what I did. I wasn’t trying to do anything. I was just sitting here, not asking for anything, not pushing, and she—
I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.
What am I supposed to do with that?
“Well.” Rane breaks first. Of course he does. “That went.”
“Fantastically,” Kyron says. Dry.
“I called her beautiful out loud. To her face. Within the first ten seconds.”
“We know. We were there.”
“I’m just saying, if we’re ranking who made it weird—”
“You’re winning,” Locke says. “Congratulations.”
Rane drops his head back against the couch. “She probably thinks we’re insane.”
“We are insane,” Vaelor says from the kitchen doorway. He hasn’t moved either. None of us have, really—just our mouths. “Did anyone else notice she didn’t want to eat? Or drink? I offered her water and she looked at me like I was handing her a grenade.”
“She’s been in processing for days,” Kyron says. “She doesn’t trust anything with a label on it.”
“It was a glass of water.”
“From a stranger. In a house she didn’t choose. After being transported here against her will.” Kyron’s voice is flat. “She’s not wrong to be careful.”
No one says anything.
I should say something. Contribute. I’ve been too quiet and they’re going to notice, and then they’re going to ask, and then I’m going to have to explain something I don’t understand myself.
“Beckett.”
Too late.
I look up. Rane is watching me, head tilted, something careful in his expression.
“You good?”
“Fine.”
“You sure? You’ve got a look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you’re somewhere else entirely.” He pauses. “Where’d you go?”
My face feels warm. I don’t know why my face feels warm.
“It’s stupid,” I say.
“It’s not,” Rane says immediately. No hesitation.
He doesn’t even know what I’m going to say. But that’s Rane—he decides things before he has all the information.
“She moved toward me,” I say, and my voice comes out too quiet. “Before she stopped herself.”
Silence. I wait for someone to laugh, or shrug, or change the subject.
No one does.
“What do you mean?” Vaelor asks.
I look up. They’re all actually listening.
“When you were introducing everyone. She looked at me and she—” I sit up a little straighter. “She took a step toward me. Then caught herself.”
Rane sits up slowly. “I didn’t see that.”
“You were talking.”
“I’m always talking.”
“I know.”
Kyron is watching me now with that sharp, assessing look he gets. I can feel it even without looking. “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know.” My hands want to do something. I press them flat on the book. “She looked at me and her shoulders dropped. Just for a second. Like she could breathe.”
No one says anything.
“And then she panicked,” I add. “And left.”
More silence. I’m definitely red now. I don’t blush often but when I do it’s obvious and I hate it.
Locke pushes off from the wall and moves toward the kitchen without a word. Vaelor steps aside to let him pass.
“Food,” Vaelor says after a moment. “We should eat. It’s ready.”
It’s a deflection and everyone knows it, but I’ll take it anyway. Anything to move, to do something with my hands, So we can all stop standing around like idiots processing a five-minute interaction like it was a natural disaster.
Which it was. Sort of.
The kitchen is warm and smells like garlic and something roasted. Vaelor made enough for six—he always does now, has for weeks, like he’s been preparing for her without admitting it. Plates come out. Silverware. The familiar rhythm of a meal we’ve shared a hundred times.
I take a plate. Put food on it. Sit at the table.
I don’t taste any of it.
“She’s going to be a problem,” Rane says, and then corrects himself immediately. “Not like that. For our ability to function like normal humans.”
“We’ve never functioned like normal humans,” Kyron says.
“We’ve faked it better than this.”
“Have we?”
“I didn’t used to blurt out that women were beautiful the second they walked into a room.”
“You absolutely did. You just didn’t mean it before.”
Rane opens his mouth. Closes it. “Okay, fair.”
I push food around my plate. They keep talking—about her, about what happens next, about whether we’re all going to survive this—and I’m listening but I’m not. Part of me is still in the living room, watching her step toward me and then away.
She didn’t flinch when I looked at her. Everyone else made her flinch.
I don’t know what to do with that.
Vaelor is cleaning up, moving plates to the sink, and I make a decision before I think about it too hard. I get up. Take a clean plate from the cabinet. Fill it carefully—enough to be a meal, not enough to overwhelm. The roasted vegetables. Some of the bread. A piece of the chicken.
“What are you doing?” Rane asks.
I don’t answer. My face is warm again. I find the foil, cover the plate, find a marker in the drawer.
Nova.
I write it on a piece of tape and stick it to the foil. Open the fridge. Put the plate inside. Close the door.
When I turn around, they’re all watching me.
My chest feels tight. “She didn’t eat,” I say. Too defensive. “She might later.”
No one makes a joke. No one teases me about it. Vaelor just nods once, something soft in his expression, and goes back to the dishes.
I sit back down.
Maybe she won’t even find it. Maybe she’ll think it’s weird. Some stranger making her a plate, putting her name on it like she’s a kid at daycare. Maybe I should take it back out and pretend I never—
No. It’s fine. It’s just food. People need food.
My own plate is cold now. I eat it anyway.
We’re halfway through cleanup when the alert comes through. All five of our phones buzz at once—that synchronized chime that means the system wants something.
Kyron checks his first. His expression doesn’t change, but something in his posture tightens.
“Orientation,” he says. “Tomorrow. 0900.”
“All of us?” Rane asks.
“Cluster members required. Attendance mandatory.”
“So yes.”
Locke makes a sound. Low, irritated. “They’re not wasting any time.”
“They never do.” Kyron sets his phone down. “They want to see how she fits. How we react to her. Whether we’re stable.”
“Are we?” Vaelor asks. It’s not quite a joke.
No one answers.
I think about tomorrow. Nova in some bland room being walked through rules she didn’t ask for. Us standing there pretending we’re not cataloging her every breath.
We’re not going to pass whatever test they’re setting up.
I don’t say that out loud.
The kitchen gets cleaned. Rane makes a bad joke about getting beauty sleep. Vaelor checks the fridge—checking on the plate, I realize, making sure it’s still there. Kyron disappears to his room with his phone. Locke doesn’t say goodnight; he never does.
I’m the last one in the kitchen.
The house is quiet now. Upstairs, behind the third door on the left, she’s probably not sleeping. I’m not going to sleep either.
She stepped toward me.
I keep turning it over, trying to understand. I didn’t reach for her. I didn’t say anything soft or reassuring. I just sat there, existing.
And she moved toward me anyway.
I’ve watched people my whole life. I know what tension looks like, what fear looks like, what someone planning to run looks like. I know how to read a room before anyone says a word.
But I don’t know how to read this. I don’t know what it means when someone’s shoulders drop just because they’re looking at you.
I don’t know how to be careful with something like that.
I turn off the kitchen light and go to bed.