Page 32 of Override

“You’re drifting again.”

I blink back toward him across the candlelight. “Sorry.”

Ronan studies me quietly for a second before reaching for my wineglass and replacing it with water instead. “You’ve barely eaten.”

Again reasonable. Everything is always reasonable.

By the time we return to the estate later that night, exhaustion sits heavily behind my eyes while rain taps softly against the windows upstairs.

As I move through the second-floor hallway toward the guest bathroom near the library, one of the hallway cameras turns slowly away before I reach it.

Not dramatic. Just enough that the lens no longer follows my movement completely. I stop mid-step. The camera remains angled toward the opposite wall. My pulse stumbles once.

Weird.

A strange awareness crawls across my skin while silence settles through the hallway around me. Then, after several seconds, the camera rotates smoothly back into place like nothing happened at all. I stare at it another moment before stepping into the guest bathroom and locking the door behind me.

The silence inside wraps around me instantly. No cameras. No blinking lights. No watching.

Just quiet. No one watching. No one correcting. No one asking me to be better.

Lately...That feels dangerously close to peace.

Chapter 8

Keaton (Skee)

By the time Rachel decides everyone is doing birthday shots, I’m already regretting leaving the office.

Not because the bar is bad.

The place is actually decent in that aggressively loud kind of way where old rock music shakes the walls hard enough to rattle the beer signs and half the people inside look capable of either rebuilding an engine or starting a felony before midnight.

It’s the people part I object to. Too many bodies. Too much noise. Too many opportunities for someone sticky to breathe near me.

Across the booth, Rachel points accusingly at me with a tequila shot balanced between her fingers. “If you even think about pretending that’s water, I’ll fight you.”

I glance down at the clear liquid in front of me. “Seems dramatic.”

“You’re dramatic.” She slurs her words.

“I’m literally sitting still.” I lift my glass.

“Emotionally,” she clarifies.

Wheels loses his mind laughing beside her while Sloane rolls her eyes hard enough to qualify as a medical emergency.

“You know,” Sloane says while sipping her drink, “watching all of you interact explains why Rachel drinks.”

“Rude,” Rachel gasps.

“Accurate,” Bullet mutters from the end of the booth without looking up from his beer.

That alone makes everyone pause. Because Bullet talking voluntarily is statistically significant.

Rachel points at him. “See? Elias gets it.”

Bullet takes another drink calmly. “I said accurate. Not healthy.”