11

11

The next day, Hannah and Victor made plans to come over. I tried to pretend I was excited about it.

I was excited about it. I wanted to meet Victor and Hannah in person. I was not disappointed that Edan and Hannah were now going to be in the same room. Edan and I weren’t together. He was allowed to date whoever he wanted.

I kept telling myself this.

Maddie’s mom made us breakfast—eggs, toast, potatoes, and fruit, and we all ate together in the dining room off the kitchen. My breakfast for the past six months had been a protein bar eaten on the way to the gym, and at home I usually tried to leave before Dad got up, so the family meal felt a little strange. In a nice way.

“So where is Priya from again?” Nicole asked Maddie as we ate.

“Birmingham, Alabama.”

“Right. And Dorsey? Where did he go?”

“He’s from Indiana, but he went to Chicago to see friends,” Edan said. “Laila’s there too, actually. She’s from Chicago.”

Nicole looked at me. “Your brother is in Dallas, isn’t he? You didn’t want to go see him over the holidays?”

I hadn’t even considered that. Laurence and I were closer these days, but I couldn’t imagine going to Dallas just to see him. Would I stay at his apartment? That would be so awkward. We would run out of things to talk about in about ten minutes.

“I think that would be weird,” I said.

“Why?” Maddie asked.

“We’re just . . . not very close,” I said, uncomfortable.

“You could change that, if you wanted,” Maddie said. “Do you want to invite him here? Mom wouldn’t mind.” She looked at Nicole for confirmation.

“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Nicole said with a smile. “But it’s up to you, Clara.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “We’re going to Dallas next month anyway. I can see him then.” If he even wanted to see me. Laurence and I never hung out when we lived together. Maybe awkward phone conversations were the extent of our relationship.

“What about you, Edan?” Nicole asked. “Are you going to see any of your old friends?”

“Yeah, we’re going to meet up tomorrow,” he said.

“I guess you’ll have the house to yourself tomorrow,” Nicole said to me with a smile. “Maddie and I are going to Long Island to visit her grandparents.”

I smiled like I enjoyed being the only loser without friends or family to visit.

After breakfast, I took my laptop into the media room and sat on one of the huge sectional couches. The room was like a mini movie theater, complete with a giant screen and a bunch of remotes that looked like far too much work to figure out.

I opened my messages and clicked on Laurence’s name. I’d told him I was going to New York, but I hadn’t updated him since we arrived. I figured I could do that, at least.

Hey, made it to New York. I think we’ll be here through the holidays.

I’d asked Noah to send me all our training plans, and I clicked over to my inbox to see an email from him. He’d sent everything—the original plans Grayson and Julian had created, some of the tweaks they’d implemented after the program got off the ground, and what Noah and the other trainers had been working with lately. The current program was pretty much exactly how I’d been trained—a couple weeks of intense work, and then throwing the trainees right into the fire.

Noah had also sent the numbers on our dropouts, going all the way back to people who’d left in Paris. We hadn’t kept very thorough records of why people dropped out, but Grayson had, and the most common reason was recruit doesn’t feel strong enough in hand-to-hand combat to stay.

I wondered if more training would have changed that. I suspected that for some, it would not have. Fighting scrabs wasn’t for everyone, regardless of how much training you had.

A note that Grayson had scrawled across the top of a recruit’s exit paperwork caught my eye—inquired about a noncombat option. Follow up in the future if we have teams that don’t engage directly with scrabs.

Teams that didn’t engage directly with scrabs? I hadn’t heard anything about noncombat teams. I wrote a quick email to Noah, asking if he’d seen anything else in Grayson’s notes about that.

The elevator opened, bringing laughter with it (I still wasn’t over the fact that they had an elevator in their house). I pressed Send on the email and closed my laptop.

Maddie stepped out of the elevator, Victor behind her. He stopped his chair when he spotted me, his face breaking into a grin. His dark hair was cut shorter than last time I’d seen him on Maddie’s laptop screen.

“Clara!” He opened his arms, and then abruptly dropped them. “Oh. Are you a hugger?”

I smiled, walking over and leaning down to embrace him briefly. “For you, I definitely am.” I looked at the empty elevator as the doors closed. “Wasn’t Hannah coming too?”

“I’m here!”a breathless voice called. I heard running footsteps on the stairs, and Hannah appeared a moment later, bracing her hands against her thighs. “Oh god. So many stairs.”

“I told you we’d all fit in the elevator,” Maddie said, amused.

“I know but . . .” She gasped for air. “It seemed like a good idea . . . to get the full experience. But . . . so . . . many stairs.” She sucked in a breath, her eyes landing on me. She was prettier in person. She had pale, lightly freckled skin, and she wore a pink sweater dress with an oversized gray scarf, tights, and knee-high black boots. I’d never been able to clearly see Hannah’s clothes over Skype, or maybe I just hadn’t been paying attention. But she was clearly the sort of person who cared about fashion, and it looked good on her.

She strode over to me and gave me a quick hug. “It’s nice to meet you in person, finally,” she said.

“You too.”

She pulled her backpack off, set it on the table, and unzipped it. “I made cookies. Chocolate chip.”

“Seriously?” Maddie asked.

“Why do you say it like that? What’s wrong with cookies?” she asked, pulling out a giant plastic bag full of them. Her eyes lit up suddenly as she spotted something behind me.

I didn’t need to look to know it was Edan. That was how she always looked when he appeared on screen.

“Hey, Hannah,” he said, walking across the room and giving her a quick hug. I watched as they pulled away and her eyes flicked up and down his body. Edan must have seemed really different in person to her. There was just no way for the camera to capture Edan—the subtle way he took in a room, his eyes finding each person and then an exit, because he was always totally aware of his surroundings. The way he leaned slightly away from some people and slightly toward others. The way he touched the scar in the tree tattoo on his left arm, rubbing his fingers over it absentmindedly. Hannah wouldn’t have seen any of that through the lens of a camera, and part of me was desperately sad that she knew all of it now.

And I couldn’t help but notice how Hannah’s eyes kept sliding back to Edan as she offered cookies to Maddie and Victor. Edan was pretending not to notice. I’d wondered once, before I knew him well, if he really didn’t notice when people stared at him. Now I was sure—he was pretending. Edan always knew who was around him, where their attention was directed, and which pocket their wallet was in.

He’d confessed that last thing to me sheepishly one night. He said it was a habit he couldn’t kick; he just immediately looked for a sign of a wallet or other valuables. So, right now he knew two things about Hannah: She probably had her wallet in her backpack, because her dress didn’t have pockets, and she kept glancing his way.

Maddie sat down at the end of the one of the couches, and Victor wheeled over to sit next to her. I took my spot on the other side of the couch.

Hannah grabbed her bag of cookies, opening it and offering it to Edan, who sat next to her.

“Thanks,” he said, taking one with a smile.

I took one when she passed the bag to me. They were soft and delicious.

“Wow, these are good,” Edan said. Hannah beamed.

“She bakes all the time,” Victor said. “My girlfriend loves her because every time Hannah comes over, she brings us something. She’s still talking about those brownies you made last week.”

“I’m a stress baker,” Hannah said. “And I’m stressed, like—”

“Always,” Victor finished.

Hannah laughed. “Yeah. Always.” She glanced at her watch. “Speaking of, I should hurry this up, because I have to be in class in an hour.” She pulled her laptop out of her bag and opened it. “I managed to get you four tickets to the conference in Dallas. It sounds pretty disorganized, but they’re all pretty pumped about it. Might be helpful.” She punched a few keys. “I just forwarded the tickets to you. Just a heads-up that you’re going to stick out if you go. It’s going to be, like, ninety-nine percent dudes, from what I can tell.”

“I am definitely going,” Maddie said.

“You always stick out, anyway,” I said.

“And you’re coming with me,” Maddie said.

“Of course.”

Hannah frowned at her laptop. “I think the Arizona leads on Dust Storm are a dead end, so there’s no need to go down there right now. But I was thinking I could organize all the other places I’ve heard about recently into, like, a kind of road trip? So you can hit them all up?”

“Sounds good,” Maddie said.

“When do you think you’ll go?” Hannah asked.

“We can go now,” Maddie said, reaching for her phone. “I’ll look up flights.”

“Maddie, she hasn’t even made the list yet,” I said, my exasperation coming through in my voice. “Let’s just regroup here in New York for a bit, OK?”

She frowned at me. “I don’t want the teams suspended for too long. The faster we do this, the faster we could get back.”

I bit back a sigh. Trying to get Maddie to slow down and listen to me was an incredibly annoying task at times. “Christmas is just around the corner, and your mom was just telling me how excited she was that we would all be here for it and New Year’s.”

Maddie blew out an annoyed breath.

“Plus, I think you should go to this fundraiser that’s here in town in a couple days,” Hannah said quickly, clearly noticing the tension between us. “If you can get tickets.”

“What fundraiser?” Maddie asked.

“The Lexington Foundation’s annual gala.”

“Oh yeah, I know them. That’s Howard and Jill’s foundation. I’ve actually been to one of those fundraisers. With my parents, a few years ago.”

“It looks like they go way back with Roman Mitchell, and on the foundation’s website—”

“Wait, who is Roman Mitchell again?” Edan cut in. “I know that name from somewhere.”

“He’s the head of security training at MDG,” Hannah said. “He coordinates all their training programs. He’s Julian’s boss. Way up the chain of command, probably fully in the know about all the shit they’ve been doing. Anyway, there’s a section on the Lexington Foundation website where they say they donate to ‘new technologies.’ It’s super vague, but it says they invest in bioengineering projects. And something about emerging technologies and artificial intelligence. Which could be nothing or could be code for ‘we’re sending lots of money to MDG because we’re besties with Roman.’ Might be worth going, seeing who shows up and seems chummy with the MDG crowd.”

“Absolutely,” Maddie said. “I’ll get some tickets. It shouldn’t be a problem. Edan, do you own a tux?”

He gave her a look like that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. I bit back a laugh.

“Do you seriously want me to go to that? Do you remember what happened, like, every time Grayson made me hang out with your rich friends?”

“That’s a good point.”

“What happened?” Hannah asked.

“I’m not great at pretending I’m not horrified by the amount of money these people spend on stupid shit,” Edan said.

“It’s kind of hilarious to watch, actually,” Maddie said. “One of Grayson’s friends would be talking about buying a second boat, and Edan would just make this weird face and walk away. It really wasn’t subtle.” She paused, considering. “Maybe I’ll just take Clara.”

“I should point out that I definitely don’t have a dress for that kind of event,” I said.

She waved her hand. “We’ll get you one.”

“And we’ll stay in New York through the holidays?”

“Yes, we’ll stay,” she said with a sigh.

Hannah and Victor caught us up on a few more things, and when it was time for them to leave, Edan offered to walk Hannah to the subway. I watched as the three of them piled into the elevator. Part of me wondered if he just wanted to spend some time alone with Hannah.

Maddie stopped beside me as the elevator doors closed.

“You know that Hannah is going to make a move on Edan,” she said. “Soon, probably.”

I nodded, swallowing. “She’s nice.”

Maddie turned to me with an exasperated expression. “Yes, she is. She’s nice and pretty and smart, and she fucking bakes. And unless you tell Edan that you have feelings for him, he might very likely take her up on her offer.”

“I don’t have feelings for Edan,” I said.

Maddie rolled her eyes. “Clara, please.”

Heat crawled up my neck. It was a lie, and we both knew it. “I mean, I guess I could have feelings for Edan. But I’m not letting that happen.”

“Seriously? You think you can just turn it off like that?”

“I . . . Yes?”

“You’re seriously going to keep punishing yourself for one mistake? You’re never going to date again just because you made one very brief mistake with Julian?”

“It’s not that I’m never going to date, it’s just that . . . it’s complicated. And I don’t know if I should date my friends.”

“No, so much better to date your enemies,” she said dryly.

“You know what I mean. You know it was hard for me to make friends, and now that I have, I don’t want to ruin it.”

“I think it says a lot about your state of mind that you think becoming romantic with someone means ruining your relationship.”

“That’s . . . I don’t think that’s exactly what I meant.” Though she had a point.

“What did you mean, then?”

“I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

“You know who could really help you sort this out? A therapist.”

“I just need time.”

“Or a therapist.”

“Maddie,” I said, exasperated.

“Sorry.”

“I told you I’m good.”

“OK.” She paused. “But just for the record, I vote for Edan. And the therapist.”