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“Jordan.”
“I’ll expect you to drill with me at least once—”
“Jordan!”
He stills, and a Jordan I don’t know gazes back at me, worry tugging at his brow. I close the distance between us, my feet ten steps ahead of my head. And this time he doesn’t move away.
I hold his gaze, determined to lasso that piece of him trying to run. Be here, he’d told me once when we danced. That’s what I want from him right now. That longing to be connected to me. To let me be connected to him.
He stills in my presence, his chest rising and falling faster than it should. But he still doesn’t move away.
“What is it? What’s changed?”
His expression hardens. His shoulders hang as if they’ve never known true rest. I wish he would just tell me. Instead of shutting me out. But Jordan strikes me as the helper, not the helped.
Let me in, I want to say. But instead I reach for his fingers, and to my surprise he lets me take them. His fingers play on mine and before I realize it our hands are laced between one another, locked together, braver than our words. I chew the words on the edge of my lips, trying to choke them down. Trying to convince myself these flutters aren’t real. But all I manage is to squeeze his hand again and hold on tighter. He squeezes back.
“Is it true you’ve been back three whole days?” I ask.
He sighs and breaks our touch. “Going to Hartsboro gave me a lot to think about.”
We sit together on the bench.
He draws his words as if from a deep well he’s never drunk from. His gaze is fixed on the ground instead of at me. “Being here has changed me.”
“How?”
“Quell, I’m a Dragun. Do you understand what that means?”
“I do. But—”
“There is no but.”
“But.” I scoot closer to him. “You’re also Jordan Wexton, my really good friend. It was a long eight days, and I missed him.” I want to hear him proclaim his feelings so I know I’m not alone on this island. But I hesitate to push.
After an ocean of silence: “And he missed you.”
He pulls me into a side hug, and my head finds his shoulder. We stay like that for a long while. I hesitate to break it, but now that things feel a little more right between us, there’s so much I want to say.
“I was so relieved when I heard the girls were found.”
“What do you mean?”
“The girls from your House, they’re okay, right?”
“Quell, I didn’t find them alive.”
My heart squeezes. The Perl girls are dead.
He moves the hair out of my face, and I lean into his hand, to offer him some comfort, but immediately worry I’ve been too bold. His expression warms, and his fingers trace the curve of my nose, my cheeks.
“Talk about something else,” he says.
“Did you see your parents?”
“Something else.”
“Tell me a story, a fun one from when you were little. And I’ll tell you one. How about that?” I should be able to scrounge up a few harmless memories to share.
