Two steps into the outer entrance hall, after the telltale click of Mrs. Divs’s door, Niles snags the colorkit box from my hands. He stuffs it under one arm and walks backward toward the elevator. “Walk you home.”
“I think I can make it.” I reach for the box, but he holds it out of reach. He has only an inch on me, maybe two, but he more than makes up for it in arm length. I bounce, reach, and miss by inches. He’s fast.
And I’m done.
“Fine, knock yourself out.” I duck around him to the stairs.
“Hey!” He reaches the stairwell door before I do, props it open with his back. “Don’t be like that.”
“And what should I be like? You have that all figured out?”
He blinks, leaning back into the door until the handle hits the wall. I move past him to the stairs.
“Wait.” He straightens, brushing off his tank and slacks as if shedding a second skin. Swaps the box between arms and holds out his hand as if we’re at some kind of fancy party. “Wasn’t trying to get off on the wrong foot. I’m Niles.”
“And I’m the hack-bomber’s daughter.” I ignore his hand but he doesn’t drop it.
If anything, he reaches closer. “Kit, right?”
“Fine.” I take his hand and do the whole nice-to-meet-you bit. His fingers are cool. “Yes, Kit. Can I have the color boxes now?”
He smiles, a habit apparently. “Then what excuse would I have to walk you home?”
I drop his hand and hit the stairs. Three steps and he’s beside me again. “So, how are your feet?”
“None of your business.”
“Are you bleeding anywhere else?”
“Why do you care?”
“Just making conversation.”
“Don’t.”
He shrugs, unfazed. “All right.”
People are weird.
He winks. We climb. A clatter of echoes and silence. After the first two landings, the day catches up with claws and my feet drag, each harder to lift. Setting them down doesn’t feel too great, either. We clear the third floor.
“What was with the other day?” I ask.
“Hmm?”
“At the Market. You flipped the table on purpose.”
He shrugs. “Nah, just clumsy.”
I stop. Two steps up, so does he. We stare.
“Cut the act,” I say.
“Act?”
“Charm, whatever. What was up with yesterday?”
Another shift of arms and shoulders, the box sliding from one hand to another, back and forth. Once, twice, stop. “Answer me something.”
“I asked first.”
He looks at me, into me, a straight up visual lock. “Why didn’t you jump?”
I freeze, the air taut with webs and spiders, and a stare I can’t break without letting him win. “What?”
“On the walkway, above the fans.” Objective and neutral, like asking about the weather. Even his body language has nothing to say. “That’s what you were up there for, right? You thought about it.”
He’s dreaming this up, he was too far away to see.
He should have been too far away to see.
My arms half reach to hug my chest. I force them to my sides. “You don’t know what I was thinking.”
His brows flatline in a yeah, right. “It’d be an ugly way to die.”
Which was the problem.
“Do I look dead?” I jump the next three steps, landing on the one past his, and take the rest two at a time.
This is not a conversation I’m having, least of all with him.
He keeps up, reaching my landing just as I hit the door. “Are you okay?”
He sounds so sincere, even honest, and I laugh. “Is this a trick question?”
Which apparently is the key to pissing him off.
“Fine.” He steps closer, knuckles shiny on the box. “Are you going to try again?”
“What’s it to you?”
The air vibrates and me with it, feeding the tension or reflecting it back.
“Because I know,” he says. “Which means not stopping you is as bad as pushing you myself.”
“You want the chance? Then have at it.” I grab the stairwell rail with both hands. We’re only five stories up, so not guaranteed lethal, but with any luck I’ll break my neck on the way down. I plant a bare foot on the central pipe and hoist myself up. I’ve barely cleared the bar when arms wrap my waist and haul. We stumble and almost crash, his back hitting the wall and mine his chest. But we’re still on the landing, still stable.
Except now he’s squeezing me like the world might end if he lets go.
“What the hell?” he whispers, ragged in the quiet. Everything is ragged; our breath, my heart.
“You almost—” he swears, forehead falling to my skull as he swears again.
I know that tone, this hold, that swear. Terror. Fully formed and nothing but. He’s rife with it, the echoes burning through his hands and chest—leaking out and into me. My stomach knots heavy and breathing hurts.
I almost broke him. Scraping me off the stairwell floor probably would have. Seeing me fall, all that blood.
Just like I broke Dee. She retreated. Dee never retreats.
At least Mom killed people outright. Apparently I have other ways.
I curl forward.
“No.” Niles pulls me close, but my legs aren’t stable. Without the wall, neither are his. We sink. The floor’s cold. The colorkit box lies close by.
We sit. His grip doesn’t ease, like he thinks I’ll try again.
He’s right. Wrong? I don’t know anymore.
“It’s all right,” I say.
“No, it’s damn well not—”