Page 76 of Freestyle
I swallow hard.
Phoenix steps closer. “Row, if he’s back… if you think he’s back, we need to know.”
He.Alberto.
The name sticks in my throat.
“I just—” I start, then stop. My pulse won’t slow. “It was a feeling. A memory. Not a fact.”
Gray narrows his eyes. “You don’t look like someone remembering. You look like someone afraid.”
My breath catches.
I open my mouth to deny it, to explain it, to anything, but nothing comes out.
Because if I say it, if Iadmit it, then it becomes real.
Not the memory. Not the trauma I’ve already named.
This is something else.
Something new.
Something following me.
The silence stretches between us like piano wire, taut and trembling. Gray’s gaze is locked on mine, searching for something I’m not ready to give. Phoenix shifts his weight beside me, tension radiating off him like heat.
They’d explode if they knew.
Not just with rage, with purpose. They’d tear the woods apart, ransack every dorm, pull apart the very world I’m trying to keep from collapsing.
So I stay quiet.
Not because I don’t trust them, but because I don’t trust what they’ll do with the truth.
I feel the question in Gray’s eyes, I feel Phoenix’s concern pressing in like a vice.
But I just swallow it down, blink once, and say, “I’m fine.”
And that lie might be the most dangerous thing I’ve told all night.
The silence crackles.
I think, for half a second, that I might’ve gotten away with it. That my“I’m fine”was delivered with just enough calm to pass.
But Phoenixsteps forward, jaw locked.
“You’re staying with us tonight.”
I blink. “What?”
“You heard him,” Gray says, folding his arms, tone too measured. “I’m not letting you out of our sight.”
“It’s not a big deal—” I start.
“It is to us,” Nix cuts in. His voice is softer than Gray’s, but there’s steel underneath. “You’re jumpy. You won’t say why. That’s fine. You don’t owe us everything, but we’re not letting you be scared and alone.”
Their protectiveness should feel suffocating. A few months ago, it probably would’ve been.
