He seemed sad.
"How hard will Number Eight take it?" she asked.
Yaaf turned to look at her, his eyes refocusing. "He'll be angry at first, then he'll be sad, and then he'll come to terms with it."
"You sound like you know him well."
"I do, and so do the other six of our team. We will help him through it."
"Good. I'm glad that he will not have to deal with this alone. Still, I don't envy you delivering the news to your friend."
She'd had to deliver bad news to Yaaf twice already, once about his mother and now about his friend's mother. It had been difficult, and she'd not done either particularly gracefully. The first time, she'd blurted it out. The second time, she'd been more careful, but it still hadn't made it easier.
"Friends share each other's burdens," he said. "My team members were there for me when I learned about my mother's passing, and I'm going to be there for Number Eight with the six."
It was a nice sentiment, and there was a time in her life when she'd believed in it and practiced it. But life in the enclosure had stripped her of that naiveté. She had no one to share her burdens with, and she'd learned to carry them herself, not out of choice but out of necessity.
She had Tomek, and her love for him and his love for her was what had sustained her for the past five years, but he was a little boy, and he couldn't share her burdens. Nor should he. Her duty as a mother was to protect him from those burdens as best she could.
"It must be nice having people to share your troubles with, good friends who will always be there for you when you need them. I don't have anything like that, and I admit that I'm a little envious."
He tilted his head. "What about me?"
She swallowed, searching for how to express what she felt for him while she didn't know the answer to that herself.
He'd just popped back into her life and offered her hope, but he was not the same boy she'd grown up with, and she wasn't completely comfortable with him yet.
How could she be?
He hadn't evoked all these confusing feelings in her as a boy. He had just been her friend. Now he was a man, a big, powerful man, and for the first time in her life, Sullha didn't consider that a threat. She realized that she thought of Yaaf as a protector, and there was something incredibly attractive about that.
It occurred to her that this was how it should be between a male and a female.
Affection could only grow in a safe environment.
It was all very confusing.
Yaaf was still waiting for her to answer.
"You are not the boy who used to be my best friend. You grew up and you are different now. I keep looking at you and seeing the boy, and then realizing that the boy is gone, and that you are a man now. A big, strong man."
His expression hardened, and she realized that she wasn't saying this right.
"I'm not afraid of you. I don't want you to think that."
He was watching her very closely now. "But?"
"But it's confusing because I should be. We are just getting to know each other again, and it's difficult for me to reconcile all these conflicting feelings I have about you. With everything I went through, it would make sense for me to be at least wary, but I'm not, and that's what's confusing."
"What are you conflicted about?"
She drew in a breath.
"I don't know how to think about you. Are you still my best friend, or are you something different, something more? Something…"
She stopped.
The end of that sentence was a thing she had not let herself say, even inside her own head, but she'd felt it. She'd noticed the flutter in her chest when he suddenly appeared beside her, and she'd acknowledged that it wasn't because she'd been startled. She looked forward to his visits and was deeply disappointed when he skipped a day.
