Page 68 of Bound By Fury

“We need that file,” I say without thinking.

“I’m sorry?”

“I—We should break into his office, see if there are any clues inside the cabinet. I’ve recently gotten pretty good with bobby pins and a lock.”

TWENTY-FOUR

I LEAVE THE CAFÉ IN a daze, a light drizzle dampening my clothes on my walk to the library.

We part ways with a fragile unspoken truce and tentative plans to commit the heist over the weekend (after the trig test we’re both pretty sure is going to tank our midsemester grades).

It’s Wednesday, and the proposal for my history project is due on Monday. Lately I’m finding it increasingly difficult to care about my classes, except for art. It’s so unlike me.

But these days I feel like a cheap imitation, like a doppelganger, like a shadow of who I used to be back when Gigi was still alive, when Earnest felt more like a home than a calling.

The very first dredges of autumn have arrived to the mountainside, and a cool breeze gives way to gooseflesh on my arms. I’m halfway past Biltmore when someone pulls up beside me.

Rain-dampened earth and just the slightest hint of smoke.

My steps slow to a crawl.

“What do you want?”

“It’s starting to really cool down, huh? It’s a little early in the season. Not that you’d know though, since you’re usually long gone by now.”

I refuse to look at him and instead attempt to ignore the sting of Malachi’s eyes scraping down the side of my face like a trail of fire ants.

“Are you really talking to me about the weather right now?”

We haven’t spoken to each other since that nonconversation with Alastair and Lucas outside the library. It’s hard to believe that was only a few weeks ago.

Even though we don’t speak, he’s seemingly always around. The burn of his gaze ever present.

He huffs out a quiet laugh, and it startles me so much, I nearly trip over my own feet. Embarrassment warms my cheeks, but for some reason he doesn’t comment on it.

“Odds you fail the trig test next week?” he asks without context, and this time I stop walking for real and peer up at him cautiously.

He stares back at me, his face completely neutral except for his eyes which shine with a nostalgia so severe, it feels like it steals something important from me. Some tiny bit of my hardened resolve.

“Um… like, one in four,” I say, cringing.

He nods solemnly. “You never were that good at math.”

“Hey!” I laugh, slapping him on the arm. “Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s nice to say.”

His lips pull to the side, though it’s not quite a smile as he turns and resumes walking. I fall into step with him easily.

“Okay,” I start, picking up the rhythm of the past. “Odds you ever tell me what’s up with all those new tattoos?” I glance at his face, waiting to see irritation flickering across his features, but it doesn’t come. Instead, his cheeks pinken, and he turns away to hide it.

“One in a million,” he murmurs, his hands folding behind his back.

“One in a million? Really?”

We lapse into an uncomfortable silence for a few steps, and the longer we go without talking, the quicker my heart is beating until he’s looking at me curiously like he can somehow feel it, the way my body reacts to being so close to him.

“Odds you’ll tell me what you’re thinking about right now?” he asks, his voice thick.

I shouldn’t entertain him. I shouldn’t want to tell him everything I’ve been biting back for months now. I shouldn’t let him trick me into giving him even more fodder with which to torture me.