Page 27 of Bird on a Blade

“My husband tried to kill me,” I start.

“Ex-husband.” He says it quickly, eyes flashing.

“Well, yes.” I run my hand nervously over my hair. “At this point, yes, obviously. Once I feel safe enough to—” I look at him. “That’s the part you’re hung up on? Not the part where he tried to kill me?”

Sawyer’s eyes glitter. “I already knew that he tried to kill you.”

Fair enough, I suppose. I lean my elbow on the counter, eyes fixed on the bird skull. The cupcake box. “He’s abusive,” I say. “He’s always been abusive. Emotionally, mostly.” I wonder if someone like Sawyer Caldwell even understands what that means. “But in the last few years…” I trace invisible shapes on the glossy counter. “I’m in recovery for an eating disorder,” I say, and the words feel strange in my mouth, kind of knotted and twisted. “I went into recovery a few years ago. Scott—that’s my husband—he didn’t want me to.”

A darkness passes over the counter. It’s Sawyer, leaning close to me. “Why not?”

His stare is so intense that it almost feels as if he’s slicing apart my skin. I lift my gaze to him, wondering if that will lessen it, but it only makes it worse, seeing his big dark eyes and his full lips and his sharp cheekbones.He shouldn’t look like that,I think, and I know it’s my eating disorder voice, singing the same song in a different key.

Evil is ugly. Goodness is beautiful.

“Because I gained weight,” I say flatly.

Sawyer frowns. “You’re the same size as you’ve always been.” It’s not cruel, the way he says it. Just stating a fact.

I laugh, though. “It’s been fifteen years. I don’t know where you?—”

“I was in the ground.”

I still don’t know what he means by that. I’m not sure I want to know. I sigh. “After what happened... here.”

He doesn’t react.

“After what happened, me being the only survivor, I was in the news a lot. Lots of pictures of me on the Internet. And since Camp Head Start was a weight loss camp, well… you can imagine.”

“It was?”

I look up at him, certain he’s mocking me.

“I didn’t pay attention.” He shrugs. “You don’t need to lose weight, Edie.”

His words hit me like a punch. Or a knife. I’m struck silent by them, and I curl my fingers against the counter and take a slow, deep breath.

“Thank you,” I finally spill out, and I mean it. Has anyone ever said that to me? That exact sentence? I don’t think they have.

“Didn’t then, either,” he adds, and then he tilts his head like he’s waiting for me to continue.

And I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me or the fact that he seems to like me the way I am when no one ever has before. But I keep going.

“It was the stress,” I say. “What started it, I mean. All that attention—it made me self-conscious. And made me feel out of control. Everything was being done to me. Not eating was something formeto do, you know? The only thing I could do, it felt like.”

He stares at me, and I have no idea what I’m seeing in his face. In his expression. I’ve been through this so many times, with Dr. Valunzuela and the recovery group and even Charlotte. Never with a man, though. And certainly not with a…

Whatever Sawyer Caldwell is.

“It’s my fault,” he says suddenly.

“What?” Ireallydon’t know how to react to this. I mean, he’s not wrong, but I don’t particularly want to tell him that.

“I killed those counselors for you.” His voice is strangely flat. “They treated you like shit, all four of them. I watched it for two damn months. I knew you probably wouldn’t see it the way I did, you not being a Hunter and all, but I didn’t think—” Something clouds up in his eyes. “I didn’t think about the aftermath like that.”

We stare at each other. My mouth is dry, my heart fluttery and tight. Everything this man does startles me. Confuses me. It’s been like that since the beginning, when I faced him in the dining hall and fully expected to die, only for him to show me the kindness I’d been missing since the camp closed and I’d been trapped with the tormenters my mother hired.

He reaches between us and grabs the cupcake box and pops it open. The scent of sugar wafts into the air, nearly drowning outthe scent of coffee gurgling behind us. It pulls me back into the present, out of the past.

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