Page 101 of The Diamond in the Rough

And which I’d never, ever escape.

20

He was worriedabout the kid. And Tony. And about what was going to happen when the two of them ended up in a room together, even though things had gone okay at the asylum.

That fucking asylum.

He’d tried so hard to avoid having to drag the poor kid back to that fucking hellhole, it just hadn’t worked out that way.

More’s the fucking pity.

I jerkedmyself back out of Hart’s thoughts, his hand strong on my elbow.

“You okay, kid?” he asked me, a frown pulling at his brow.

I nodded. “Yeah, just lost my balance for a second.” I forced a smile I didn’t feel, nerves and anxiety making my stomach churn, and not because of Hart’s thoughts or hand on my arm.

Raj was hovering behind him, his expression serious and a little shadowed.

I hadn’t expected Raj to ever come back to Beyond theVeil again, even though he’d been kind when we’d been at Tranquil Brook. But he’d been the one I’d seen first, coming back down the hall from the kitchen and crashing into Hart, who’d been coming out of Ward’s office.

It didn’t take me more than a few moments to extricate myself from Hart’s head—but it annoyed me that it still happened. That I could still be ambushed by others’ thoughts, even though I was getting better at deliberately blocking them.

The expression Hart had on his face as he studied me told me that he wasn’t certain whether or not I was telling him the truth. I liked to think I was—there were just a couple different ways you could take the phrase ‘lost my balance.’

I guess that meant I was getting better at not taking things so literally—something Ward had been encouraging me to try to do. People are very bad at saying what they really mean, and not just because they’re prone to lying. While I’m not very good at telling when peoplearelying, I understand that. I have a much harder time with saying things that don’t mean what they seem.

But apparently I was getting better at that right along with blocking my psychic ability and being a little bit more of a contributing member of society.

Growing up at twenty-four, I guess.

A little.

“You got a minute, kid?”

I nodded. That was one of those non-literal phrases that I understood. When someone asked if you ‘had a minute,’ it almost never meant an actual minute. It usually meant several minutes up to possibly an hour.

I had plenty of time, so it didn’t matter that he almost certainly didn’t mean a minute.

“Can we use my office?” Hart asked.

It wasn’t anymore, of course, but I knew what he meant. I nodded again.

Hart waved for Raj to go in first, and the big tiger shifter did, his movements smooth. Hart followed, and I came in after them, hesitating in the doorway.

“So, thanks to you,” Hart said, gesturing for me to sit, “we’ve managed to put together enough to get a search warrant for Barclay Jennings’s home.”

They both looked at me.

“That’s good, right?” I asked, glancing between them, although Raj seemed to be looking slightly over my shoulder, so—flushing—I went back to looking at Hart.

“Yeees,” Hart replied, drawing out the word.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “But?”

Raj let out a sigh. “What my colleague is failing to do is ask you to come with us,” he said, his voice mostly flat with just a hint of annoyance.

I blinked.Oh.