“What?”

  “They didn’t like me at all. It made holidays very uncomfortable.”

  “Why didn’t they like you?”

  “They thought I was a gold digger. I didn’t come from money like him.”

  I looked up at her in surprise. I’d assumed she’d grown up like Maddie—filthy rich parents, private schools, some fancy college where she’d met Maddie’s dad.

  “My parents weren’t poor,” she said. “We were solidly middle class, but that might as well have been dirt-poor to the St. Johns. They were old school—they had a few girls in mind that they’d decided were appropriate, and they thought they’d be able to control Greg and make him marry one of them.”

  “I guess that didn’t work out so well for them.”

  She laughed. “No one controlled Greg. Gray and Maddie inherited that trait, unfortunately.” Her smile faded, and she closed her eyes, taking in a long, shaky breath.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice nearly a whisper. “About Grayson.”

  She opened her eyes, but didn’t say anything.

  “I really liked him,” I continued. “And I feel . . .”

  “Responsible?” she guessed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Yes.” I gulped, alarmed that she’d guessed correctly. Maybe she blamed me too.

  “So does Maddie. So does Edan. So do I. Julian . . .” She trailed off, gaze distant. “That little shithead. I should have put my foot down about him years ago.”

  I almost laughed, and she smiled a little at my expression.

  “I never liked Julian. He was an entitled little shit, but so were most of Maddie and Gray’s friends. Greg said that I didn’t understand what it was like to grow up with”—she gestured around the kitchen—“all of this. He said they’d grow out of it, be nicer adults. But Gray and Maddie weren’t like that.” She laughed. “Most of the time, anyway.” She picked up her knife. “But Julian was horrible. He was so angry all the time, and always taking it out on whoever was closest. I blame myself for not pushing harder to get him out of Gray and Maddie’s life.”

  “You couldn’t have known that he would . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The image of Maddie sitting over Grayson’s dead body flashed through my brain.

  “In my experience, men who can’t control their anger in small situations tend to be the most dangerous when the big situation comes,” she said, holding my gaze.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But that’s not something you should blame yourself for, OK? You were not responsible for Julian’s anger, even if you were the one he was mad at.”

  “I know, but . . .” Tears pricked my eyes. “Keeping an angry guy calm is what I’m supposed to be good at. I’ve done it my whole life. I went back to Julian because I thought I could handle him, and I couldn’t. As soon as he got mad at me, I froze and I got scared, and I should have been able to handle it. I should have.” I had to put the knife down because I couldn’t see through my tears.

  “Clara, honey, no one could have handled Julian. It was not your responsibility to stop him or to calm him down. You did what Grayson wanted you to do—stop the shipments. He’d be proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wiping my eyes.

  “I’ve asked Maddie to let the police handle Julian, but she doesn’t seem too keen on that idea.”

  “I’m not sure that any of us have faith in the police after Julian got off scot-free.”

  “Just because they haven’t charged anyone yet doesn’t mean they’re not building a case.” She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself as much as me.

  “Maybe,” I said skeptically.

  “But I know that Maddie will do what she wants. She isn’t the most forgiving girl in the best of circumstances, much less now. If I force her to let this go and Julian never pays for what he did, I think it might eat her alive.”

  “I think so too,” I said softly.

  “Just be careful, OK?” she asked. “Take care of each other.”

  I smiled at her, realizing suddenly that my nerves had passed at some point during our conversation. “We will. I promise.”

  * * *

  I fell asleep quickly that night in my giant, plush bed, and woke at three A.M., groggy and disoriented. I tossed and turned for a while, until I heard the sound of footsteps outside my room. I sat up, listening as they faded. Edan.

  I slid out of bed, grabbing a sweatshirt and pulling my hair into a ponytail. I opened the door to find the media room dark and deserted. I quietly walked up the stairs to the next floor.

  The library was dark except for the lamp next to one of the couches. Edan sat on the end, absentmindedly tugging the zipper of his hoodie up and down with one hand, and holding a book with the other.

  He looked up and smiled as I drew closer. “Hey. Can’t sleep?”

  I shook my head and lowered onto the other end of the couch. “It’s morning in London.”

  He put his book face-down on the cushion next to him. “And it’s too quiet.”

  I cocked my head in question.

  “You don’t think so?” He leaned his head back, looking up at the ceiling. “I’ve never slept in a place this quiet. There isn’t even any street noise. No snoring roommate.”

  “Does Dorsey snore?”

  “A little. Plus, there was always someone in the hall or honking outside or something noisy. Here it’s, like . . . unnaturally quiet.”

  It was, now that I thought about it. It hadn’t been this quiet at night since I left home.

  Actually, it hadn’t been this quiet ever since I left home, night or day. I realized suddenly that I’d never been this alone with Edan, unless you counted the time we were kidnapped and locked in a room together. Even our nights on the balcony weren’t really private—recruits would often spot us and wave from the street. A drunk guy did a dance for us once.

  Even that night I’d spent in his bed, I knew Dorsey would return at any time. Or a recruit would come looking for us.

  Here, we could have all the privacy we wanted. My bedroom door locked. And suddenly my excuses for keeping Edan at a distance felt like just that—excuses. I could have scooted over on the couch and leaned into him just to see how he reacted. The thought was terrifying.

  I pulled my knees up to my chest and pressed myself harder into the armrest instead.

  “Did you let your friends know you’re in town?” I asked, after a silence that had stretched out for too long. I didn’t know if I was imagining it, but it seemed like those types of silences were becoming more common between us.

  “Yeah. I’m going to meet up with them day after tomorrow, I think.” He looked down at his phone, on the cushion beside him. “And I realized too late that I maybe shouldn’t have posted that picture to Instagram.”

  “Which one? The one from today?” He’d posted a picture of the skyline from the roof of the house, with just the caption NYC.

  “My mom messaged me as soon as I posted it, asking to meet up. She said she was staying with a boyfriend in the Bronx and would be happy to come to me.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t respond.”

  “Did you change your mind? Do you want to see her?”

  He leaned back with a sigh. “No. I’m positive that she just wants something from me. Money, probably. She’s mentioned Maddie in a few of her messages. Asked me if I was dating her.” He scrunched up his face in an expression that was either thoughtful or grossed out.

  “What is that look?” I asked with a laugh. “Don’t pretend to be disgusted at the prospect of dating Maddie. I have eyes.”

  He chuckled. “No, of course not. Not disgusted. Terrified, maybe.”

  I bit back a laugh.

  “No, I was thinking about Grayson,” he said quietly, his lips turning up as he spoke. “He actually tried to set the two of us up once. Did Maddie tell you that?”

  I nodded. Maddie had told me early in our friendship, back when she kept telling me that Edan liked me. There had still been a bit of awkwardness to our relationship because of Julian, and I was pretty sure she’d wanted me to know that it wouldn’t happen again with Edan. I couldn’t imagine any guy coming between us now.

  “Yes,” I said. “She didn’t tell me the whole story, she just said Grayson was the worst matchmaker of all time.”

  “God, he really was. He told me that he thought I was a good guy because I’d never hit on Maddie the three brief times I’d met her. I was like, ‘Low bar, Grayson.’ But I guess all his friends hit on her and he was good friends with Julian, so . . .”

  We both winced.

  “Anyway, he invites me to his birthday party, and Maddie’s there, of course,” Edan continued. “He corners us both, says something about how great I am, and then practically runs away. It’s so obviously a setup, and we both just stand there, staring at each other awkwardly. She tries to be polite—actually, now that I know her, she was making a huge effort to be nice. I’m kind of surprised she didn’t just roll her eyes and walk away. But it all immediately goes downhill. She asks how I know Grayson, and then looks like a deer in headlights when I tell her I was staying at the homeless shelter where he volunteers. It’s so obvious that she has no idea what to say to that.” He laughed. “She sort of recovers and asks where I go to school, and I’m like, well, I dropped out. And she gets this expression on her face, like she thinks someone is playing a joke on her. We’re surrounded by all these people who go to fancy private schools and attend Ivy League colleges, and her brother just set her up with the high school dropout who is crashing on friends’ couches.”

  I cover my face with my hands. “Oh no.”

  “At that point, there’s no way for it to get more awkward, so I say I’m going to find the restroom, and I just leave the party. But I guess she sees me ducking out, because she follows me onto the street.”

  I drop my hands from my face. “She did?”

  “Yeah. She apologizes and says she didn’t mean to be an asshole and tells me to come back inside. She says to give her my number and we can go out sometime. And I’m like, ‘Uh . . . I’m actually seeing someone.’ Grayson had neglected to ask me about that.”

  I threw my head back with a laugh.

  “At that point, the polite version of Maddie totally fades away and she’s like, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, I’m going to kill Grayson.’ She grabs my hand, drags me back inside, and makes me come with her while she yells at Grayson about never setting her up with his friends. He sheepishly agrees, Maddie apologizes to me again, and the rest of the party was incredibly awkward.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Later I found out that she’d just broken up with Julian and Grayson thought that I was the exact opposite of Julian, and therefore a good choice. Which, honestly, I’ve always taken as a compliment.”

  “It certainly is.”

  “But Maddie always avoided me after that. In fact, we didn’t interact much until we were put on the team together. Grayson really was the worst matchmaker of all time. He made it so we both felt too awkward to speak to each other again for, like, a year.” His smile faded, and he looked down at his hands. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I think my mom thinks that I’ve hooked up with a rich family, and that’s the only reason she’s contacting me. I considered going to stay with my friends in Queens instead just because I didn’t want her thinking I was mooching off the St. Johns.”

  “No,” I said quickly. Too quickly. He looked up at me, clearly surprised. “You can’t leave me alone with the rich people.” I smiled to try and sell the lie. I wouldn’t have minded being there with just Maddie and her mom at all. I just didn’t want him to go.

  He returned the smile.

  I held his gaze for a beat too long, and silence settled between us again. I quickly looked away, clearing my throat.

  “Uh, I should try to go to sleep.” I stood, glancing at him.

  He reached for his book, his gaze downcast. “Yeah, I probably should soon too.”

  But he didn’t get up, and part of me wished that he would. Part of me wanted to go upstairs together and climb into one of our beds. I wanted to feel his arms around me and bury my head in his chest and listen to his heartbeat.

  Of course, things were this awkward between us because we’d done that once. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if we slept in the same bed a second time. We’d probably never look at each other again.

  Or sleeping in the same bed would turn into kissing in the same bed and then I would surely ruin our friendship entirely.

  I turned and headed to the stairs, not looking back at him as I went. “Good night, Edan.”

  11

  The next day, Hannah and Victor made plans to come over. I tried to pretend I was excited about it.

  I was excited about it. I wanted to meet Victor and Hannah in person. I was not disappointed that Edan and Hannah were now going to be in the same room. Edan and I weren’t together. He was allowed to date whoever he wanted.

  I kept telling myself this.

  Maddie’s mom made us breakfast—eggs, toast, potatoes, and fruit, and we all ate together in the dining room off the kitchen. My breakfast for the past six months had been a protein bar eaten on the way to the gym, and at home I usually tried to leave before Dad got up, so the family meal felt a little strange. In a nice way.

  “So where is Priya from again?” Nicole asked Maddie as we ate.

  “Birmingham, Alabama.”

  “Right. And Dorsey? Where did he go?”

  “He’s from Indiana, but he went to Chicago to see friends,” Edan said. “Laila’s there too, actually. She’s from Chicago.”

  Nicole looked at me. “Your brother is in Dallas, isn’t he? You didn’t want to go see him over the holidays?”

  I hadn’t even considered that. Laurence and I were closer these days, but I couldn’t imagine going to Dallas just to see him. Would I stay at his apartment? That would be so awkward. We would run out of things to talk about in about ten minutes.

  “I think that would be weird,” I said.

  “Why?” Maddie asked.

  “We’re just . . . not very close,” I said, uncomfortable.

  “You could change that, if you wanted,” Maddie said. “Do you want to invite him here? Mom wouldn’t mind.” She looked at Nicole for confirmation.

  “I wouldn’t mind at all,” Nicole said with a smile. “But it’s up to you, Clara.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “We’re going to Dallas next month anyway. I can see him then.” If he even wanted to see me. Laurence and I never hung out when we lived together. Maybe awkward phone conversations were the extent of our relationship.

  “What about you, Edan?” Nicole asked. “Are you going to see any of your old friends?”

  “Yeah, we’re going to meet up tomorrow,” he said.

  “I guess you’ll have the house to yourself tomorrow,” Nicole said to me with a smile. “Maddie and I are going to Long Island to visit her grandparents.”

  I smiled like I enjoyed being the only loser without friends or family to visit.

  After breakfast, I took my laptop into the media room and sat on one of the huge sectional couches. The room was like a mini movie theater, complete with a giant screen and a bunch of remotes that looked like far too much work to figure out.

  I opened my messages and clicked on Laurence’s name. I’d told him I was going to New York, but I hadn’t updated him since we arrived. I figured I could do that, at least.

  Hey, made it to New York. I think we’ll be here through the holidays.

  I’d asked Noah to send me all our training plans, and I clicked over to my inbox to see an email from him. He’d sent everything—the original plans Grayson and Julian had created, some of the tweaks they’d implemented after the program got off the ground, and what Noah and the other trainers had been working with lately. The current program was pretty much exactly how I’d been trained—a couple weeks of intense work, and then throwing the trainees right into the fire.

  Noah had also sent the numbers on our dropouts, going all the way back to people who’d left in Paris. We hadn’t kept very thorough records of why people dropped out, but Grayson had, and the most common reason was recruit doesn’t feel strong enough in hand-to-hand combat to stay.

  I wondered if more training would have changed that. I suspected that for some, it would not have. Fighting scrabs wasn’t for everyone, regardless of how much training you had.

  A note that Grayson had scrawled across the top of a recruit’s exit paperwork caught my eye—inquired about a noncombat option. Follow up in the future if we have teams that don’t engage directly with scrabs.

  Teams that didn’t engage directly with scrabs? I hadn’t heard anything about noncombat teams. I wrote a quick email to Noah, asking if he’d seen anything else in Grayson’s notes about that.

  The elevator opened, bringing laughter with it (I still wasn’t over the fact that they had an elevator in their house). I pressed Send on the email and closed my laptop.

  Maddie stepped out of the elevator, Victor behind her. He stopped his chair when he spotted me, his face breaking into a grin. His dark hair was cut shorter than last time I’d seen him on Maddie’s laptop screen.

  “Clara!” He opened his arms, and then abruptly dropped them. “Oh. Are you a hugger?”

  I smiled, walking over and leaning down to embrace him briefly. “For you, I definitely am.” I looked at the empty elevator as the doors closed. “Wasn’t Hannah coming too?”

  “I’m here!” a breathless voice called. I heard running footsteps on the stairs, and Hannah appeared a moment later, bracing her hands against her thighs. “Oh god. So many stairs.”

  “I told you we’d all fit in the elevator,” Maddie said, amused.

  “I know but . . .” She gasped for air. “It seemed like a good idea . . . to get the full experience. But . . . so . . . many stairs.” She sucked in a breath, her eyes landing on me. She was prettier in person. She had pale, lightly freckled skin, and she wore a pink sweater dress with an oversized gray scarf, tights, and knee-high black boots. I’d never been able to clearly see Hannah’s clothes over Skype, or maybe I just hadn’t been paying attention. But she was clearly the sort of person who cared about fashion, and it looked good on her.