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“Liar. You can smell it.”

“I can smell that you were aroused. I do not know why, and I will not guess.”

He looked up. His cheeks were red, but his eyes were steady.

“It was you,” he said.

Something in my chest gave way. It was quiet. It did not hurt.

“Ah,” I said.

“Don’t ah me.”

“I would not dare.”

“I don’t know what it means,” Lex said, in a rush. “I’m not saying it means anything. I don’t know if it’s the bond or the Jäger or a stress thing, I just— I don’t do this, okay? I don’t feel things. I hit people. That’s my whole deal. And you walk in with your accent and your weird pale face and your bread and I can’t— my brain won’t—”

“Lex.”

“What?”

“You do not need to know today.”

He stopped.

“You do not need to know this week. You do not need to decide anything.” I stood up, slowly, and put the chair back beside the desk. “You have all the time you want. I am very good at waiting. I have had a great deal of practice.”

He looked at me with an expression I could not read. Then he stood too, and picked up his boots from beside the bed, and pulled them on with jerky, fast movements, like a man in a hurry to be somewhere else.

“I’m moving to Jason’s room,” he said. “Today. That’s not— it isn’t a rejection. It’s just, I need to think, and I can’t think in a room that smells like you.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“No,” I said honestly. “But I will not stop you.”

He grabbed his jacket. He walked to the door. His hand was on the handle when he turned back, and for one second I thought he might say something else, something large.

“You know,” he said, “I’m gonna kick your ass on Saturday.”

“Game Three is not until the following week.”

“Then I’m going to kick it early. “

“I look forward to it.”

He rolled his eyes so hard I could hear it. And then he was through the door, and down the hall, and gone.

I did not follow. I want that written somewhere, in a book, in stone, in the record of my long life. I stood in the middle of Room 214 with my hands at my sides and the smell of him around me like a warm coat, and every animal cell in my dead body strained to go after him, and I did not move.

It was, without exception, the hardest thing I have ever done.

I sat down on the edge of the daybed and put my face in my hands.

Then I realized I was smiling again, and that this time I had no idea how to stop.

Chapter 10