Adrian
I didn’t expect her to come back.
The first day of the training camp I’d told myself the whole performance was for me. She’d enrolled to be seen struggling, to make me watch her bleed on the training ground. She wanted to make me feel something.
It was the kind of thing the old Lily would have done — engineer a spectacle of her own suffering and wait for the audience to give her sympathy. I’d refused to give her the satisfaction. I hadn’t looked at her once. I’d been very disciplined about not looking at her.
She’d run drills until she vomited into the grass and gone back to the line without wiping her mouth. I’d assumed that was for my benefit too.
She’ll quit by tomorrow, I’d thought. This isn’t a girl who lasts.
And yet there she was.
Second morning, the canteen packed wit
