“Hey,” Alex said as he swung open the screen door.
I swallowed my fear and smiled. He stepped behind me and wrapped his hands around my waist.
“It’s so nice out,” he whispered in my ear.
Even if his touch had my skin crawling, I relaxed a bit. If this were bad news, he wouldn’t be so calm.
“What did you want to talk about?” I asked, ready to get this conversation done with. I was going to claim a headache and go straight to bed.
He paused. “It’s been almost three months since we’ve been living here.”
I nodded, wondering where he was taking this.
“It feels like we aren’t connecting like we used to. I know I’m not home as often as I want to be. But I was thinking maybe we could start spending more time together. To get it back how it was,” he said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully.
“I thought that’s what we’ve been doing the last two days?”
“Maybe we could sleep in the same room.”
I went rigid before I could stop myself. His hands left my hips, and he pulled on my arm until I was facing him.
“You don’t want to?” He frowned.
“I do,” I said quickly. “I want to spend more time with you. But I don’t know if I’m ready to be intimate—”
“I wasn’t talking about sex.” Annoyance crept into his voice.
“Alex, I’m sorry. It just took me by surprise,” I told him as softly as possible while panic engulfed me.
“Does that mean you want to?”
I swallowed. “Yes, I think that would be nice.”
Alex smiled and kissed me on the lips. I pulled away and hugged him so he wouldn’t catch on that I’d rather stab him again than feel his mouth on mine. The thought of sharing a bed with him made me sick to my stomach.
This was the man who I had loved more than anything. He betrayed me. He chose the society over me. Over my mom and sister. I’d come to realize how involved he was with them. He would do anything for them. But I had to get closer to him. So that he would trust me more. I needed to find out more. And if sharing a bed could help, that’s what I would do. And unless I made a plan to run again, I really didn’t have much of a choice.
We went back into the house and sat on the couch. The couch felt small with all three of us sitting. With me always in the middle. I looked at Niko, and he didn’t even glance my way. He had to be curious about what we’d talked about, but he wasn’t going to ask.
“Niko, you can move back into your room full time,” Alex said as he smiled at me.
He tore his eyes from the TV and looked at his brother. “You really like this couch, huh?”
“No. Sage and I are going to start sharing my room.”
I waited for his reaction, but never got it. His usual grin didn’t even twitch.
“Good. I missed sleeping in my bed every night,” he said as he looked back at the screen.
Well, that hurt more than I expected. Was sex all he wanted from me? He didn’t seem to care at all that I was going to be sleeping with Alex. Or he was even better at covering his emotions than I had thought.
We sat and watched a movie that ended all too soon. Going into that bedroom with him was daunting. Alex took my hand as we got off the couch and went down the hallway. Looking over my shoulder, I caught Niko glaring at Alex’s back, looking pissed.
Alex tugged me into the bedroom, and I stared at the bed. Suddenly, the queen-size bed seemed so small. I grabbed a T-shirt and shorts to sleep in and went into the bathroom to change. When I came back to the room, Alex was already in bed without a shirt on. My eyes traveled down to the scar on his stomach. He caught my gaze and covered his stomach with the blanket. Still too sore a subject to talk about. For either of us.
I slid into bed and lay on my side, facing him. The urge to stay as close to the edge as possible was overwhelming. I wondered if Alex would want to cuddle like we used to. I got the answer when his hand moved to rest gently on my hip.
He looked into my eyes, and I saw the guy I was once so crazy about. His gaze only showed warmth and devotion. But now I knew who he was. That he would have let the society kill me if that’s what they had chosen. Unlike Niko. That thought wouldn’t leave my head. Niko had kept my secrets. Alex’s hand tightened on my hip, and I focused back on him. I had seen the coldness Alex had in him the night he had found me. In my eyes, the man I had fallen in love with was dead.
I woke up with a stiff neck and realized it was still the middle of the night. I didn’t want to roll closer to Alex, and lying on a sliver of the mattress wasn’t great for deep sleep. My eyes went to the ceiling when Alex’s phone went off, making a soft glow light up the room.
My mind went into overdrive when an idea popped into my head. A very stupid idea. But as my heart leaped into my throat, I decided I was going to do it anyway. I’d been here months and hadn’t found one single useful thing about the society. It was time to change that.
Carefully rolling out of the bed, I glanced at Alex, who was snoring softly. He had always been a deep sleeper, which worked to my benefit. Tiptoeing around the bed, I reached for his phone on the nightstand. I had been wrong about it being the middle of the night. It was almost six in the morning. I glanced at the notification that had gone off. It was an ad, nothing he’d worry about missing.
Keeping the phone on the table, I quickly typed in his passcode. I’d known what it was for weeks but was never alone with his phone long enough to use it. I peeked at the bed to make sure Alex was still sleeping with his back facing me. My heart was racing, and my fingers trembled as I went into his Notes. I frowned, finding nothing useful. Deciding to go through his texts, I scrolled through the conversation with his dad.
My excitement began to fade as I read through the messages. They were careful not to mention anything about the society. If they did, it was so hidden I couldn’t even tell. My hope of finding enough to expose them was disappearing more every day. I froze when I saw something I recognized.