He half hopes that Opal is a secret bigot who will be frightened off by the implication that he spent a semester sneaking into another boy’s dorm room, but she merely rolls her eyes and mutters “Rich kid names” in a tone of mild disgust.
“So then . . .” She looks away from his face, as if the next question doesn’t much matter. “What’s your deal?” The mocking smile has wilted very slightly, leaving her looking young and wounded, almost vulnerable. Arthur traps his hands between his knees and presses hard.
“It has nothing to do with you. I mean it does, but it’s not—you don’t understand.” It sounds pathetic even to him.
“Jesus, fine. It doesn’t matter.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “I’m tired, and you’re probably not going to bleed out overnight. Could you dig up a spare blanket somewhere?”
She tries to throw herself defiantly onto the couch, but she stiffens as her body hits the cushions. It’s a tiny motion, less than a wince, but Arthur hears the hitch in her breath. He notes that her palm is still pressed to her left side, that the pads of her fingers have gone white.
And it’s just like that night on the riverbank: the sight of her pain sends a hot tide of guilt through his body, fills him with an urgent, animal desire to make it stop. He finds himself on his knees, folders and notes scattered around him, reaching for Opal as if she belongs to him.
But they were children back then, and Opal was too busy dying to notice him. Now she watches him warily, her body held stiff and upright. He wonders when she learned to hide her wounds from the world, and why the thought makes his throat tight. He stops his own hand in midair, an inch above hers.
After a moment he manages to say, more roughly than he intended, “Let me.” He is distantly aware that it should have been a question. He scrapes up the ragged remains of his decency and adds, “Please.” Opal watches him for another uncertain second, searching for God knows what in his face, before lowering her hand slowly to the couch. It feels like surrender, like trust; Arthur deserves neither.
He runs his fingers over each rib, pushing through the soft heat of her skin to feel the bones beneath. He wishes he couldn’t feel her heart beating on the other side of her sternum, quick and light. He wishes she weren’t watching him with that foolish trust in her eyes, as if she’s forgotten it’s his fault she’s hurt. He wishes his hands weren’t shaking.
But he finds no cracks or splinters. The terror recedes, leaves his voice hoarse. “Just bruised, I think. Not broken.”
“I’m lucky like that.” Opal is aiming for sarcasm, but her ribs are rising and falling too fast beneath Arthur’s hand. He reminds himself that there is no medical emergency, that he should absolutely stop touching her now. The desperate, animal feeling should fade away, but instead it turns hot and languorous, coiling in the pit of his stomach.
He feels Opal swallow. Her voice is an exhalation. “Are you really going to kick me out again?”
God, he doesn’t want to. He wants to push up her shirt and press his lips to the hollow place between the wings of her ribs. He wants to make her spine arch against the couch. He wants her to stay, and stay.
So does the House: the room is warm and wisteria-sweet around them, the light gentle amber. He wonders if Opal has noticed that the water comes out of the faucet whatever temperature she wants and the cushions are always precisely where she likes them best. That she never trips on the stairs or fumbles for a light switch, that the sun follows her from window to window, room to room, like a cat hoping for affection.
Arthur knows she would make a good Warden, much better than himself. He was born in the House, but Opal was called, and the House calls the homeless and hungry, the desperately brave, the fools who will fight to the very last.
For a dark, tilted moment he can almost see her as she would be years from now, if the House had its way: scarred and war-weary, smiling that crooked smile over her shoulder at him. The Wardens don’t last as long as they used to, but Opal would. She would make a war of her life, would fight so long and fiercely that Hell itself would tremble.
Until the day—perhaps a long time from now—when she would fall, and would not rise again. Then a new headstone would join the others, and a new portrait would appear on the wall, the latest addition to a gallery of stolen years. Somewhere, another homeless bastard would begin to dream of staircases and hallways and black eyes that watched through the mist.
Unless Arthur stops it all.