Page 33 of Legacy Found

The conversation comes easy. It always does with him. I ask about Frosthaven — what it was actually like, before here — and he surprises me, because instead of the careful half-answers he usually gives about his past, he tells me a story. Something about a survival exercise gone wrong, a roommate named Leo, and an instructor who apparently still hasn't forgiven any of them. It's ridiculous and funny and he tells it well, and by the end I'm laughing so hard I have to stop walking.

"That did not happen."

"Every word," he says, dead serious, and then ruins it by grinning.

And it hits me, watching him — the guy who sizes up every room, who sits with his back to the wall, who notices trouble before anyone else does — that there's a lot more to Torres than the jokes and the tattoos and the face I keep getting distracted by.

I want to know the rest of him.

The thought catches me off guard.

So does the fact that, sometime in the last few days, I've started looking for him when I walk into a room.

And apparently smiling whenever I find him.

He notices. Of course he does; he notices everything. But he doesn't say anything about it, and neither do I.

Somehow, without either of us deciding it, we end up in his room.

It's tidier than I expected, sparse enough to make me think he's used to leaving places fast. We sit on the floor with our backs against his bed and compare Merit Mark rumors because I want to know everyone's totals, and I immediately regret it, because now I'm worrying.

"Okay, but look — some of these people are still at one. One mark." I can’t understand what they are doing. "If they don't figure out which professors actually give marks, they're going to run out of time before they even—"

"Jess." Torres is watching me looking amused. "You can't save everyone."

"I know," I say.

"...I'm still going to worry about them, though."

He laughs — the real one, low and warm. "Yeah. I noticed."

And I realize he's smiling, the easy one that makes me feel special and very warm.

"Hey," I say. "I don't think I've actually said it. Thank you. For — everything, honestly. For looking out for me all week. For answering approximately four thousand stupid questions about a world I didn't know existed until, like, Sunday."

"They're not stupid," he says quietly.

And when I look over at him, he's already looking at me.

Neither of us looks away.

It's only then that I realize how close we're sitting — closer than I registered, close enough that I can see the dark of his eyes isn't flat brown at all but has warmth in it, close enough that the air between us has changed temperature. My heart skips a beat. I'm nervous, suddenly, but not the bad kind, not the I want to leave kind. Just — aware. Aware of him in a way I haven't let myself be all week.

He reaches up, slow, and brushes a loose strand of hair back behind my ear. Barely touching. His fingers are careful. Gentle. My breath catches. For half a second, sorrow flickers across his face—and then it's gone, and we're both leaning in, and my heart is absolutely slamming now, and his eyes drop to my mouth, and—

Someone pounds on the door.

We jerk apart so fast I nearly take out a lamp.

"Jessica?" Sophia's voice, muffled and cheerful through the wood. "You alive in there? You vanished. I'm invoking friendship rights."

I press a hand over my racing heart and start laughing, silent and helpless. Torres drops his head back with a groan that comes all the way up from his soul.

I get up, still laughing, and open the door.

Sophia takes one look at me — flushed, unable to stop grinning — and then past me at Torres, still sitting on the floor looking like a man whose life was ruined thirty seconds ago, and her whole face lights up with pure, delighted understanding.

"Oh my God," she says slowly. "I interrupted something."