Page 57 of Fractured Loyalties
She uncrosses her arms. “You ever think maybe watching me was a way to keep me at a distance?”
“Every day.”
She walks toward me, her fingers trailing along the edge of the desk again. She stops a breath away.
“What do you see now?” she asks.
My answer is immediate. “Someone who should be burning. But still chooses to stay lit.”
Her mouth pulls at the corner, not quite a smile. “You always talk like you’re bleeding poetry.”
“I don’t bleed. I leak control.”
Mara stares at me for a second too long. Then her phone vibrates in the hoodie pocket. She flinches like she forgot it existed.
She pulls it out. The screen flashes: Celeste.
I watch her face tighten. Her lips press together.
“You should answer,” I say.
She nods slowly. Doesn’t move.
Then she answers with a clipped, “Hey.”
A pause. I can hear Celeste’s voice faintly through the line, fast and tight.
“No, I’m okay. I just stayed with a friend.” Another pause. “Yeah. I’ll be back at the clinic before noon.” She hangs up and exhales through her nose. “She was worried.”
“She should be.”
Mara gives me a look that isn’t quite amused. “You’re not jealous of her, are you?”
“No,” I say simply. “She hasn’t seen the file.”
Her breath catches at that.
Then she says, “If she did, she’d probably kill you.”
“She’d try.”
And she laughs, just once. But it’s real.
The sound leaves a mark. I can feel it like a fingerprint pressed to the inside of my chest.
She looks down, then back up. “Can you drop me off at the clinic?”
“I was going to insist on it.”
I see the brief flare of something in her eyes—defiance maybe—but it doesn’t last.
Ten minutes later, she’s dressed, her hair pulled into a quick knot, her mouth glossed but unsmiling. My hoodie has been traded for a long black cardigan, another of my clothes that I left for her in the room. It doesn’t hide the small bruise at the base of her neck. She doesn’t cover it. I say nothing.
The car ride is quiet, but not cold. She turns toward the window, and I let her keep the silence.
“You going to walk me in?” she asks when we pull up.
“No.”
