ASH
I had been studying her reactions for weeks now.
Not obviously. Not in a way she'd been able to catch and call me out on directly, though she'd come close more than once — the staring she'd asked me to stop, the proximity she'd tried to put rules around, the way she kept reorganizing that supply bag whenever things got too close to something she didn't want to name out loud.
I'd watched all of it carefully, trying to figure out one specific thing: whether the brother arrangement she'd drawn up was actually how she felt, or whether it was a wall she'd built to stand behind because the alternative felt too exposed.
The longer I watched, the clearer the answer became.
It was a wall, built from whatever she'd survived before I knew her — the trial, the Pits, Elias and everything that
