Page 18 of The Alpha Experiment
He kept eyeing me for a minute, and I still couldn’t read his face at all. I wanted to turn around, but then I’d be…what, mooning him Camp Uranus style? Why did I feel awkward? Jesus, I hated knowing I was keeping a secret from him. That had to be it.
“Anyway,” he went on, “it’s like a fucking sauna in here. You been showering the whole time I was gone? Get your ass out of there, or dinner’s going to be cold. I hit the deli counter at the grocery store.”
Without giving me time to reply, he turned and pulled the door shut behind him. I shook my head and hurried up. He might’ve clawed my door, and I felt incredibly shitty about lying to him by omission…but he’d also had me at ‘deli counter.’
I rushed out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, oddly shy, and scurried into my room, feeling a lot less off-balance once I’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. When I got out, Colin had already dished up fried chicken and sides on the coffee table and started stuffing his face.
I plopped down next to him and followed suit, my tension easing with every bite. This was normal. Eating, not bothering with table manners, normal. He hadn’t noticed anything.
Until I realized he had, and he’d been biding his time, waiting for the fried chicken to soften me up. He put down a chicken bone and fixed me with a look. Not just a look; a patented Colin Look, the one that meant business, or that I was about to get tackled and tickled until I spilled the beans.
That had only happened once.
Well, a few times. But no one else saw, so it didn’t count.
“What’s the deal, Newt?”
I thought I might throw up everything I’d just eaten, but I forced myself to take one more casual bite, chew, and swallow before I answered. I might be able to put him off—at least until I’d thought of a way to explain what I’d done without causing World War III.
Because the urge to babble it all out, the whole conversation with Greenwald and all of my worries and speculations, gained force every second that Colin sat there waiting.
I took refuge in sarcasm, the conversational equivalent of running and hiding under my bed.
Could I do that for real? No, he’d catch me.
So sarcasm.
“Oh, I don’t know, man,” I drawled, hoping he couldn’t hear the faint tremor in my voice from the sudden pitter-patter of my pulse. “The stalker, the midterms, the lack of sleep, my family freaking out…not like I have anything to have a deal about.”
Colin’s eyes narrowed. “Uh-huh.”
“What are youuh-huhing me about, Col? Seriously, what do you think the deal is?” And I held his gaze steadily, willing my face not to give me away.
Oh, I was so going to pay for this later, blowing him off like this and then having to explain it all eventually. But I neededtime. I couldn’t talk to him until I had a plan. Colin was great when it came to the beer-drinking and the machete-ing and the bodyguarding, but his knowledge of genetics fell in the realm of vaguely thinking it had something to do with some German guy who had a vegetable garden.
Colin sighed and started to gather up the trash on the table. Thank gods, that meant he wasn’t pinning me with that stare anymore, and I could take a breath.
“I think you need a good night’s sleep,” he said. “And then I think we need to talk.”
“Talk, great, we can do that,” I babbled. “We’ll talk. After we sleep. A lot of sleep, okay? I’m so tired I could sleep for a week, but I still have to write and give another midterm this week, so that’s not going to happen.” I forced myself to shut up by biting my own tongue.
Colin strode to the kitchen, his hands full of paper bags and plastic containers. “Fine,” he threw over his shoulder. “Sleep tonight, talk tomorrow. Go crash out, Newt. I’ll clean up.”
That didn’t seem fair; he’d picked up dinner and shopped and bought and put away the groceries.
Another time, I’d have argued, or at least helped. But tonight I just needed to get in a room with a closed door where he couldn’t see me freaking out. Although I’d have to freak out quietly, visible or not. He’d be able to hear it if I hyperventilated.
I tossed a quick “Good night” at him and scuttled away into my bedroom, shutting the door the second I’d ducked through. My teeth could be dirty for a night. I didn’t want to risk him changing his mind about waiting to talk while I went in the bathroom and brushed them.
I’d left my laptop in the living room, and I cursed myself for it, but I wasn’t going back out there.
A notebook. I’d do this the old-fashioned way: make a list.
Propped against the wall at the head of my bed—because gods forbid I had actual furniture, and a bed frame more elaborate than a metal rectangle for my mattress to sit on hadn’t been in the budget cards—I stared at a fresh college-ruled page.
Tapped my pen against the spiral binding.
Stared some more.
