Page 93 of Slashed Bonds

The dog across the foot of the bed like a draft stopper.

I stood there longer than I should have.

I went in, in the end.

Checked that they were breathing.

Checked the nightstand for a bottle, because two people sleeping that hard is a thing I’ve seen once before and it ended with paramedics. Found a pill organizer with a strawberry sticker on it and a glass of water on a coaster.

Freshman year.

Killian, on the floor of the bathroom on the second floor with the door open and a bottle on the tile, not empty, not full enough. I did the math on what was missing before I did anything else, because that’s what I do, and then I called it in and sat on the floor with his head in my lap and counted his breaths until the lights came up the driveway.

He doesn’t remember. Niko does.

That’s the night I started keeping the bottle and the night Niko stopped sleeping alone, and none of the three of us has ever said either of those sentences out loud.

You don’t need to. Some arrangements are structural.

Then I stood at the foot of the bed and looked at the dog, and the dog looked at me.

He didn’t growl.

I’m choosing to read that as a report.

Which is probably why they’re down there now, running circles like they’ve been plugged into a wall.

And yes. Niko is trailing her.

Twenty meters back, matching her pace stride for stride, in the black shorts he never wears and a face I’ve never seen him wear anywhere but the crease. He isn’t racing her.

He’s following, the way a dog follows, the way something follows when it’s decided the thing ahead of it is where it lives now.

That’s the dangerous part with Niko.

Not the Switch. The loyalty.

Once he commits, there’s no floor under it. He doesn’t do halfway, and he doesn’t do exits, and whoever’s on the receiving end of that commitment has to be able to carry it, because he’ll never once put it down.

He likes her. It’s obvious.

It’s been obvious since the lobby.

I don’t blame him.

Because, oddly enough, I like her too.

She’s unique. Strong in the way that isn’t about weight. A baddie, the way the internet would put it, and I’d cringe at the word if it weren’t the accurate one. But under that, what she projects is something I’ve only ever seen in men who’ve been through the worst thing.

She’s been rejected. Repeatedly. By people, by institutions, by a sport that wrote her out with a three-line email. And she’s still here. Running. Aiming at something.

To me, that’s attractive as fuck. I’ve stopped pretending otherwise.

I did my research.

Roz said to.

It took four hours and two of my family’s lawyers, and here’s what the public record has on Morrigan Vesper Crowe.