Page 61 of Specter Bred

A week ago, Maeve would’ve immediately flipped him off as soon as he turned his back. Instead, she just rolled her eyes and kept moving. Which bothered me.

At least when Grizzly turned away, she muttered, “Still a fucking asshole.” But there wasn’t nearly as much venom behind it as there used to be.

After the drills ended, I caught up to her before she could disappear.

“Seriously, Maeve. Something’s changed.”

“Nothing’s changed!” she said, frustration lacing her tone.

“That’s bullshit.”

She sighed dramatically and kept walking.

I followed, refusing to be gaslit into believing I was imagining it.

I remembered going to look for her after training.

Redwood had shoved her hard enough to split her arm open, and despite how much she’d pretend otherwise, I wanted to make sure she was okay.

I’d checked medical first, but she wasn’t there. So I headed toward the instructor’s offices and caught sight of her stepping out of Graves’.

She looked... flustered. Not upset or angry. Just off-balance in a way I’d never seen before.

And as she walked down the hall, thinking nobody was watching, a small smile curved across her lips.

A real one.

Not a smirk or one of her sarcastic little grins. An actual smile. The sight had been so shocking that I’d nearly walked into a wall. Then she spotted me and it disappeared so quickly that I almost convinced myself I’d imagined it.

But I hadn’t.

And that memory had been irritating the hell out of me ever since.

Firecracker’s version of a good mood was only threatening to kill someone, normally me, once a day. But when she’d come back from Grizzly’s office, her mood was suspiciously upbeat. The tension she’d been carrying around for months seemed lighter.

“Maeve, what happened in that office?”

“Nothing!”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

She groaned.

Then, before I could stop myself, I blurted out the idea that had been gnawing at me all week.

“You like him now.”

“What?!” she sputtered, nearly tripping over her own feet.

“You heard me. You like Graves now.”

Before I could react, she lunged.

One second she was walking beside me. The next, her hand clamped over my mouth and she was shoving me backward into the nearest wall. My shoulders hit the concrete hard.

She craned her neck, scanning the training grounds to make sure no one had overheard us, but we were alone. Everyone else had already cleared out and headed for the locker room, eager to shower and get to the mess hall.

Not that I blamed them. We’d all been waiting for lasagna night. It wasn’t quite as good as Fiesta Surprise, but after a full day of training, I wasn’t about to complain about a hot plate of pasta and enough cheese to put me into a coma.