She looks at me for a long time.
Long enough that the floor drops out of my stomach and I get ready to take it back, to tell her to forget it, to let her be.
"There's a green dress," she says.
"What?"
"I bought a dress." She sets the coffee down. "I didn't know why. I've got nowhere to wear a dress."
There's a heat coming up the back of my neck and my pulse is loud in my own ears.
"Now you've got somewhere," I say.
"Now I've got somewhere." She stands. "Seven o'clock, Finn. Don't come looking for me early. I can't stand being watched while I get ready."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mila
Nova's got a curling iron in one hand and a look on her face I don't trust.
"Sit." She points at the chair she's dragged in front of the mirror. "And before you argue, I'm not doing a lot. I'm doing a little. You've got this whole effortless thing happening that I personally find offensive, and I want to give it some shape. Sit."
"I can do my own hair."
"You can. You won't." She points at the chair again. "Sit, Mila."
I sit.
Lashes is on the bed with Hope asleep beside her in a nest of pillows, and she's got the green dress laid across her lap, working a wrinkle out of it with her thumb.
She keeps catching my eye in the mirror and looking away with a grin she won't let all the way out.
"What?"
"Nothing." She smooths the dress flat. "You're nervous."
"I'mnotnervous."
"You've retied your boot twice and it's got a zipper," Nova says. "Head still."
I hold still.
The iron's warm near my ear, and Nova's got a piece of my hair wound around it, humming something under her breath.
Plus, there's a woman on the bed guarding my dress, a baby asleep in the pillows, and the whole room smells like whatever Nova keeps misting at my head. I catch myself in the mirror.
I don't look like the woman who walked up to the gate.
There's color in my face now, from the shopping day and getting some decent sleep.
My hair's gone soft around my jaw where Nova's been working it, and my collarbones don't cut out from under my skin the way they did two weeks ago.
I've been eating Ruby's food and keeping it down more often than not.
I'm sitting in a warm room letting two women fuss over me for a man.
None of it is anything I recognize about my own life.
