Page 64 of Pack Frenzy
I exhale slowly, trying to let the anger drain out of me. “Wow. Thanks for… not spilling everything about me.”
Because if they knew—if they knew about my sister, about finding her too late, about my mother who’s a drunk, and my father who’s never home—they’d look at me differently. Everyone always does. They’d see the damage first, the broken pieces, and decide I’m not worth the effort of putting back together.
“How do you know he didn’t? He could be lying,” Rowan asks, and there’s no judgment in it, just honest curiosity.
“I don’t. It’s just a gut feeling.”
My gaze flicks to Eli’s, searching for the lie, for any sign that he’s been trading my secrets like currency. But all I see is sincerity, exposed, uncomfortable, and real.
“Never told a word to anyone. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
The knot of tension between my shoulders loosens just slightly. “Thank you.”
I blink hard because I will not cry here, not in this café full of strangers, not when I’m finally starting to think that maybe I can handle this. But my eyes burn anyway, gratitude and grief tangled so tight I can’t separate them.
The air eases after that, tension dissolving under Cassian’s observation about a toothpick shaped like a swordfish that the waiter left on his plate.
“Do you think it’s decorative?” he asks, holding it up to examine it in the fading light. “Or is this some kind of commentary on the inherent violence of consumption?”
“It’s a toothpick shaped like a fish,” Eli says flatly. “At a seafood restaurant. You’re overthinking it.”
“Am I? Or are you underthinking it?”
“That’s not a word.”
“It is now. I just made it one.”
I find myself smiling despite everything, the heaviness in me lifting incrementally. But the quiet between me and Rowan still hums with something that isn’t gone…just waiting.
And I’m tuned to every shift of both Cassian and Rowan’s bodies, and the hair-thin gap between us is both too much and not enough.
Rowan moves his hand across the table, casual enough that it could be an accident. His knuckles brush mine, skin-to-skin contact that sends electricity racing up my arm.
“We’ll find out about your friends,” he says again, and this time it sounds less like a possibility and more like a vow.
I nod, not trusting my voice. The bread’s gone cold on my plate. My pulse hasn’t.
The waiter returns, balancing a tray of desserts that could feed a small army.
“I didn’t order this much,” Cassian says, staring at the spread.
“I may have added a few things, while you were distracted,” Eli admits, not looking remotely sorry. “For science.”
“Your scientific method is going to give us all diabetes.”
“A sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
I grab what looks like fried Oreos because if I’m going to have a crisis about my living situation, I might as well do it with chocolate.
Eli raises his water glass like it’s champagne, eyes gleaming. “To bad decisions in good company.”
I’m saved from poking my emotions by the waiter, who drops off another tray, this one with what looks like donut holes smothered in a syrup and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.
“Did you just flirt us into free food?” Cassian asks, eyebrow raised.
“I prefer to think of it as strategic diplomacy,” Eli says, popping two Oreos into his mouth at the same time.
“You batted your eyelashes.”
