“I’ll keep you safe.” His eyes are intense. I feel as though I could be caught in them and never be able to look anywhere else, never see anything else.
I slide off the table and tuck the chairs in so I’ll be doing something instead of drowning in his eyes. I never meant to become comfortable here, to think about wallpaper and paint, to be drawn to Peter, to care about Claire, to forget about home even for a second. But it’s been the only way to survive each day. “You can’t keep me safe every second. You aren’t with me every second.”
“Maybe I should be.” He jumps off the table beside me. I have to look at him again. His eyes are like the night sky, dark with light in them.
He’s standing close to me. We aren’t touching, but we are only centimeters apart. I feel as though my skin is vibrating from being so close to him. “You have to find lost people,” I say. Every day he goes into the void to search for lost people. Once he was sure Claire and I were safe enough, he didn’t shirk his responsibility. I admire that about him. Misunderstood hero.
“True.” He stares at me, too, as if he wants to drink me in, and I stare back, caught in his gaze. Then he cocks his head and grins. “You know, sometimes I don’t know whether to shake you or kiss you.”
My eyes fix on his lips, and my lungs feel tight. “Me, neither.” There’s an awkward pause. Neither of us moves. My eyes slide toward the kitchen. “We should make sure they aren’t planning on poisoning us.”
He nods, and we go into the kitchen, side by side but not touching.
Chapter Fourteen
Sean has taken over the kitchen. Nearly all of our kitchen implements are spread out on the counter. He has all four stove burners on, and our collection of herbs and spices is spread out next to the sink. Claire is stacking the containers by height and color into a fortress of dried leaves, while Sean mixes a little of this and a little of that into our odd assortment of pots and pans, using a fondue pot as one saucepan and a double-boiler as another. I don’t think either Peter or I have ever used either. Our meals tend to be simple. Vegetables, fruits, snacks. Lots of leftover sandwiches and burgers that I slice to avoid bits with obvious bite marks. Easy, quick meals.
As pots clatter against each other, Sean hums to himself. He stirs, splattering sauces onto the floor, and then tosses the utensils into the sink. He pours his mixtures into the pans. Drops land on the burners and sizzle.
I lean against the kitchen doorway and watch. It’s like a dance. He lunges here, he extends his arms, he twirls and spins. For a tall, broad man, he’s surprisingly graceful.
“I feel as though I should applaud,” Peter murmurs in my ear. He’s standing close behind me, still mostly in the hallway. I notice he’s positioned himself so he could bolt if he wants, and it makes me want to protect him.He’s afraid of people,I think. He spends his life saving them, yet faced with them... I feel as though I have peeked underneath his skin. I want to step back against him and let him fold his arms around me, if he wants to...but I don’t move. Not in front of Victoria and Sean.
I wonder if Claire and I are the only ones he’s close to. He’s never mentioned others. The few times I’ve tried to ask about his past, he’s steered the conversation away, and I haven’t pushed. I can understand not wanting to talk about the past. It hurts too much.
“Best part about it is the surprise,” Victoria says. She’s leaning against the wall near the refrigerator. She was so quiet that I hadn’t noticed her in contrast to the whirling swirl that is her fiancé. “I don’t think even he knows what he’s making.”
“There’s a plan!” he calls out. “There’s always a plan!”
“But do you stick to it?”
“All plans change in the heat of battle. Or the heat of the kitchen.” He dances to the sink and adds more water into a sizzling skillet. He swirls it around as he sashays back to the stove. He winks at Victoria, and it occurs to me that the dance is mostly for her benefit. She’s smiling broadly, fondly, proprietarily at him. For an instant, I imagine what it would feel like to look at Peter like that.
“Were you a cook before you came here?” I ask.
For an instant, he pauses, the rhythm of the dance broken. Victoria glares at me and says, “It’s not considered good manners to ask about life before Lost.”
“Oh.” I think of her revelation upstairs.
“Most people know that.”
“Well, if most people weren’t trying to kill me, maybe I’d have had a chance to learn the local culture. As it is...consider me rude, but I’m not going to pretend my life before here didn’t exist. I have every intention of returning to it as soon as possible.” I feel Peter tense beside me, and I realize it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned returning home. I wonder if I’ve hurt him. Glancing at him, I can’t read his expression. He’s watching Sean cook.
“Bully for you,” Victoria says. “Not all of us had such happy times before. When I...whenwereturn, we’ll start fresh.” She glares at me as if daring me to ask more about what she said upstairs. I wish I dared ask, but she holds herself so straight and still and has such a controlled face that I’m afraid to crack that facade. Besides, I don’t want to antagonize these people. The whole point of this meal is to make peace.
I take a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s just... Sorry.” I say it as much to Peter as to Victoria. He must know that I still want to return to my mother. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about him.
Victoria studies me for a minute. I squirm under her stare. It feels like the evaluating stare of my European History teacher, who we used to say could dissolve flesh with her eyes. “You talk, if you’re so keen on sharing. What’s your story?”
Faced with the same question I wanted to ask them, I don’t want to answer it, either. Not to these...friends, allies, whatever they are. “Not much of a story. Had a job. Lived in an apartment in L.A. Mom moved in with me a year or two ago when her bills got too high.”
Victoria taps her lips with her finger. Her nails are perfectly manicured a deep red. “That doesn’t sound like enough to lead you here. Or anything so salacious that it would make the Missing Man run from you.”
“I don’t know why he ran.” I manage to keep my voice even, though I want to shout or climb on the counter or throw the pots and pans that Sean is casually flinging food into. I feel Peter’s hand on my shoulder. It calms me. “I’d never met him before. I’d never even heard of him.”
As if Sean senses the awkwardness—of course he does, how could he miss it? —he interrupts in a cheerful voice, “Lucky you have a working fridge. Not every house is hooked up.”
“It was like that when we found it.” I don’t mention how Peter knew it was here, how he guided us here, or how he keeps me safe every day. He could have left at any time, but he didn’t.
