Page 34 of Mayhem

“It wasn’t supposed to.”

I crossed the room without hurrying. The closer I got, the more obvious it became that people were watching. A conversation at the next table lowered when I passed. Somebody near the coffee station looked from me to Hunter and then immediately found something else to do. I understood the point by the time I reached them. Hunter had wanted me at his table because Hunter wanted everyone else to see me there.

Malakai dragged the empty chair beside him out with one foot. “Morning.”

I looked at the chair, then at him. “You look happy.”

“I had a good afternoon yesterday.”

Ronan glanced up from his phone. His gaze landed on the faint scratch near Malakai’s collar before shifting to me, and there was enough amusement there that I knew I had already been discussed. I decided I didn’t care unless one of them became stupid enough to make it my problem.

Hunter set his coffee down. “Sit.”

I pulled the chair out farther and sat, mostly because standing there while half the cafeteria watched us would make the situation more dramatic than it deserved. A plate appeared in front of me a few seconds later when one of the men at the end of the table passed it over without being asked. Eggs, toast, potatoes, fruit. Apparently being summoned included catering.

I looked at Hunter as the plate settled in front of me. “Is this part of behaving?”

He glanced at the food, then back at me, and there was a faint shift at the corner of his mouth that I was beginning to recognize as amusement he didn’t intend to share with the rest of the room. “You’re sitting here instead of trying to carve a path through campus toward Nichlas. I’d call that progress.”

“I’m sitting here because you promised me Nichlas.” I picked up the fork and pulled the plate a little closer. “Everything else is incidental.”

Hunter rested one forearm against the table and watched me take the first bite. “I told you I’d put him in your lap if you behaved. So far, you’ve managed several hours without putting another blade near him. I’m willing to acknowledge the effort.”

There was enough satisfaction in his voice to make me want to stab the potatoes simply because they were available. I chewed instead and looked across the table. “I’m glad my restraint has been so inspiring.”

Malakai had been quiet for almost thirty seconds, which apparently exhausted him. He shifted closer in his chair, one arm stretching along the back of mine as he looked at me with the same open curiosity he’d had in the classroom yesterday. “How long were you looking for him before you found Aldrich?”

I kept eating. “Long enough that I wasn’t going to walk away once I did.”

“That could mean three weeks or three years.”

“It could.”

Ronan looked over the rim of his coffee, following the exchange without joining it. Malakai barely noticed. Once he wanted something, he had the concentration of a man worrying at a loose thread until the entire seam came apart.

He reached over and stole one of the potatoes from my plate. “So you found him yourself.”

I turned my head and looked at his hand before looking back at him. “Are we talking about Nichlas or my breakfast?”

“Nichlas for now.”

I pulled the plate several inches farther from him and continued eating. “Then yes. I found him.”

“How?”

There were plenty of answers I could have given him. Most of them were none of his business.

Malakai waited anyway, his attention staying on me even after it became obvious I wasn’t filling the silence. “You transferred here with his schedule already half-mapped. You knew where he studied, where he crossed campus, which buildings he used. That took work.”

“Most useful things do.”

His gaze sharpened slightly. “Did you know he was at Aldrich before you applied, or did Aldrich come first?”

I swallowed and reached for my water. “You ask a lot of questions for somebody who already had me against a wall yesterday.”

“That answered different questions.”

Ronan made a quiet sound into his coffee, and Malakai’s mouth curved. I could feel the conversation trying to spread into something I had no interest in participating in. Malakai wasn’t fishing for one piece of information anymore. He wanted history. He wanted the shape of the hunt, how I had found Nichlas, where we had met, what had happened before Aldrich. Every answer would make room for another.