I stare at him until he looks up at me, and I blink and look away. Tears blur my vision. I reach up to wipe my eyes, careful not to smear my makeup.
“You’re an idiot.”
He laughs a little. “Yeah, I am.” When I look at him again, he’s smiling sadly. “You know, I thought for a minute there that after the hunt was over, we wouldn’t talk anymore.”
I smile. “Yeah. I actually thought that, too. For a while.” I take a step toward him, and he takes one towards me, closing the distance between us. I stand on my tiptoes and press a kiss to his lips.
This is different from the pure, animalistic lust that took us over in the tent that night in Oregon. There’s something more to this kiss. I feel his warmth. His hands gently, almost hesitantly, settle on my hips, and I reach up to stroke his cheek. There’s some other sort of feeling here, something deep, something tender.
I pull back. He lets me go and I smile softly at him.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” he says, a dazed look in his eye. “See you tomorrow.”
It seems amazing to me that he’s not insisting on more. He looks so happy with just that one kiss. I turn and walk toward my dorm, but when I glance over my shoulder at him before I round the corner, I see that he’s touching his lips in amazement.
That makes two of us.
Erin is disproportionately proud of me the next morning.
“You did the right thing. You were the bigger person.”
I give her a tired smile. I had another rough night of sleep last night.
“I guess. I just couldn’t do that to him, not after thinking about … well, about how I’d feel, I guess.”
“Empathy,” Erin replies simply.
“I know what it’s called,” I say.
She shrugs and gives me a look. “Sure,” she says, “but I was starting to think you’d forgotten what it was.”
We head inside the dining hall and join Luiza at the table she’s staked out. To my surprise, once we’ve sat and started eating, Owen plops down beside me with Piers and Bennett filling the seats opposite.
“Morning!” Owen says brightly. He looks so much better than the last time I saw him up close. His cheeks are rosy, his hair is full and thick. He actually looks like himself.
“Morning,” I reply uncertainly.
“Can I have a bite of your pancakes?” Bennett asks from across the table. “There were none left.”
“Me too?” Piers asks. “I’ll trade you for some of my omelet.”
I cut my stack of pancakes in half and drop the bigger half on Bennett’s plate to let him and Piers sort it out. “What are you guys doing here?” I ask.
“We thought we’d eat with you,” Bennett replies.
Erin turns and grins at me.
“Have some of my omelet.” Piers holds his fork out with a bite on the end. I reach to take it, but he shakes his head, leans over the table, and feeds it to me instead.
“Me too!” Owen says, cutting off a piece of his own food to feed to me.
“We tried to get Sawyer to come over, too,” Bennett says, “but …” And he turns and glances toward the far corner of the hall. “It seems the two of you have some business left to sort out.”
Sawyer sits by himself. His stubble has grown out more than I’ve ever seen it. He’s wearing sweatpants and a dirty, wrinkled T-shirt. He’s hunched over one bowl of cereal and moving the spoon listlessly.
“He looks so sad,” Erin says quietly.