Page 108 of Stay Scared

I laugh.

Owen watches me do it with the faintest crease between his eyebrows, as though he expected interrogation and received something far less manageable.

“So somewhere in this building is a perfectly functional camera you dismantled at three in the morning because sleep offended you.”

“Several.”

“That is deeply irritating.”

“You asked.”

“I’m continuing.”

His thumb drags along his finger again.

I point at his hand. “That too.”

Owen looks down.

“You do that when you’re uncomfortable.”

His hand goes still.

The reaction gives me more satisfaction than it should.

He has spent months cataloguing every shift in my posture. Catching one of his feels indecently intimate.

I file it away.

“What do you drink at Halden?”

“You’ve seen me there.”

“I’ve seen photographs from there. You were usually holding the camera.”

“Tea.”

I stare at him.

“You spent months inside a coffee shop and don’t drink coffee?”

“I hate coffee.”

“That might be the most upsetting thing you’ve admitted tonight.”

“More upsetting than the surveillance archive?”

“Different category.”

His mouth barely moves. I catch it anyway.

“What makes you laugh?”

“That apparently.”

“You almost smiled.”

“That was sufficient.”