Chapter 30

She ate in silence, but I watched her like a hawk. Each bite she took felt like a goddamn victory. The girl who bled for me, who stalked me, who broke into my home many times and made me food, left bullets and lipstick on my pillows, who killed for me. Now wearing my shirt, sitting in my kitchen like she belonged in it. Hair still damp, sticking to her neck, legs bare, her body smaller than I remembered when she was up on that roof playing god with a rifle and yet… there was nothing fragile about her.

“You good?” I asked, voice low, like talking too loud might scare her off again.

She nodded, barely. “It’s good. Thank you.”

I leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, pretending not to track the way her fingers wrapped around the fork or how her mouth pressed into a tight line between bites like she didn’t trust the food to stay in her stomach. Or me to stay in the room.

“You don’t have to keep looking at me like I’m gonna vanish,” she muttered without looking up.

“You’ve done it before.”

“That was different.”