Page 138 of Immune

There it is. Not cute. Not sweet. And not some little before-the-end-of-the-world story I can turn into a soft smile and an “isn’t that lovely.” It’s a load-bearing wall. That memory seems to be holding something up inside her, and she just let me see one brick.

I look at the music player instead of her face.

“When?” I ask, because that’s safer than who and way kinder than why.

Her silence stretches for so long I think I might have lost her. Then she says, “Any time I got worked up over something.”

Worked up.

Not scared. Not panicking. Not breaking. The kind of wording people use when the real world wields a knife and will cut you with it.

“He’d sit me down,” she adds, her voice turned rougher now. “Paint them so fucking badly. Well, mostly. He tried, but he was really shit at it. I’m talking paint all over the skin around the nails.”

My mouth almost moves. No joking right now, Ewan. Not yet.

“He said it gave me something else to focus on.” Her hand curls tighter, thumb rubbing roughly against a nail. “Something gentle. For my inner Omega.”

The words come out of her mouth like she fully hates them for leaving. Like she despises me for hearing them. And like she hates herself the most.

I swallow hard. I’ve got joke lines up in my head, because of course I do. Little bright pockets with sharp elbows. I could say something about brotherly nail salons. Apocalypse manicures. Family discounts. Any one of them might make the moment easier.

Or they could ruin it.

Humor isn’t always running away. But sometimes it can be, and I suddenly know, with a startling clarity that makes my chest feel a little too tight, that I don’t want to run from this. Not from her pain. Not when she’s finally put a piece of it down between us and is trusting me not to kick it.

“He sounds pretty smart,” I say. Her eyes cut over to me, but I keep looking at the music player as I add, “For finding something your body could understand before your head caught up.”

Silence follows.

And it’s a big one, too. A dangerous one.

Then Dakota looks away, her thumb dragging over the black polish again, only slower this time.

“He was annoying,” she tells me, and there’s a crack in it. A soft one. The kind that makes you watch where you’re stepping.

“The best people are,” I inform her, and her gaze flicks back to me. I lift one shoulder. “I’m obviously a delight.”

“That’s debatable,” she mutters.

“Wow. Rude,” I tell her. “I’m deeply wounded, just so you know.”

“No, Kaito’s wounded. You’re just a pain in the ass,” she counters.

My lips twitch. “Both can be true at the same time.”

Her eyes narrow on me, and there it is again. Well, almost. The start of something that might have been a smile if she didn’t catch it by the throat, strangle it, and shove it into a cupboard Harry Potter-style.

I pretend like I see nothing, because I am clearly maturing. Someone needs to give me a sticker pronto.

The music shifts, the next song crackling to life with a soft guitar and a man’s voice singing about roads and going home. The device really does choose violence sometimes.

Dakota hears it and her shoulders go stiff.

I reach for the player slowly, offering, “I can skip it.”

“No,” she protests, the word coming quickly. Too quickly. Then, quieter, she says, “Leave it.”

So I do.