Chapter 50
Amy
The week after the hearing is different.
The way a room changes after a storm has passed through it.
Everything is in the same place, but the air is rearranged, and the pressure is different.
Saint is still here. The modified terms are in effect.
He reports to Dr. Ward twice a week, and I know because he tells me, which is new, the telling, the small daily accounting of his movements that he has started offering without being asked, as if he has decided that transparency is the only architecture he wants to build on.
I moved into his house.
Some nights, he is on the roof or in the hallway or running the campus perimeter at five in the morning because that is what his body requires, and I have learned not to read his absences as anything other than what they are—a man whose nervous system was rewired by years of containment and is still, slowly, learning what it means to have room to leave when he wants.
He works out a lot. All the time, but my favorite is when he poses in the mirror like the Greek statues I’ve seen in books.
His muscles are carved like art. His skin is smooth.
His textured hair is tied back with a black hair tie. Perfect. Beautiful.
Every time I see him naked, I find another muscle, another groove that wasn’t there before. Another vein.
When I fall asleep on his chest, I sleep better than I have since I was a child.
I don’t tell him. I write it in my notebook in the compressed shorthand that is mine, and I press my thumb to my forearm, and I think about what it means to have a baseline that is not fear.
On Thursday morning, I’m in the dining hall alone. Rose is somewhere with Garret.
A guy sits across from me. Not someone I know. Third year, maybe. Dark hair, easy smile. Someone who has never had a reason to doubt that sitting down uninvited would be welcome.
“Hey,” he says. “Amy, right? From the Behavioral Psych lecture?”
I look up. “Yes.”
He smiles wider. “I’m Theo. I have been wanting to introduce myself for weeks. You always look so focused, and I kept meaning to say something.”
He is not threatening. He is not Victor. He is just a guy in a dining hall being ordinarily, harmlessly forward, and I’m in the process of formulating a polite and complete response when I feel it. The air in the dining hall changes.
Theo feels it too. I can see it in the way his smile flickers, the way his eyes move to something just past my left shoulder, the way his posture shifts from easy to careful in the space of a single second.
I don’t turn around because I know exactly who is behind me.
Saint sits down beside me. Close enough that his arm is against mine, close enough to be completely unambiguous about the situation.
He sets his coffee on the table. He looks at Theo but doesn’t speak.
Theo looks back for approximately four seconds, which is genuinely impressive compared to anyone else.
Then he clears his throat. “Right,” he says. “Sorry to interrupt.” He stands. His chair scrapes, and he leaves.
I look at Saint. He picks up his coffee.
“You did not have to do that,” I say.
He takes a sip. “I did.”
“He was not a threat.”
“No,” he agrees.
I look at him. He is looking at the table with the expression of a man who is unaware of how intimidating he looks.
“Saint.”
His eyes cut to me.
“I’m not going anywhere. You do not have to remove every man who sits near me.”
He holds my gaze. “That will depend on the man, but I’m aware.”
“Then what was that?”
“That,” he says finally, “was me being very bad at sharing something I have no intention of sharing.”
I stare at him. He looks back steadily, unapologetic, which is the most honest thing he could have said. I pick up my own coffee.
“Next time,” I say, “at least pretend you are here for breakfast.”
The corner of his mouth moves. “I will get a plate.”
“Good,” I say.
We sit in the dining hall in the ordinary morning light, and I feel the warmth of his arm against mine, and I think about what it means that the most possessive thing anyone has ever done to me also happens to be the one I mind the least.