The Exiled Alpha's Human Mate

CH.8 - The Favor

Anna's POV

He doesn't say anything for a second. He just looks at me, standing there at his locker with a course book under one arm, and I watch him decide how to play this.

"A favor," he repeats.

"You said it yourself. In the doorway. You owe me, you said, and I'm here to collect." I fold my arms. "I'm collecting."

"I said you owe me."

"Did you." I pretend to think about it. "Funny. My memory has it the other way around."

The corner of his mouth moves, just barely, like a smile trying to get out past a guard who won't let it. He shuts his locker and turns to face me fully, and there it is again, that stillness he has, like he takes up less space than he should for how much room he actually fills. Up close and in daylight he looks tired. There are shadows under his eyes that weren't there on the boat, and something in me wants to ask if he's sleeping, which is a ridiculous thing to want to ask a stranger, so I don't.

"You're not afraid of me," he says.

It's not a question. It's said carefully, like he's testing a stair he thinks might be rotten.

"Should I be?"

"Most people are." He watches me. "After last night, most people would be."

And there it is, out in the open between us, the thing neither of us has named. The fight. The fist in the air. The moment he stopped.

I could lie. I could tell him yes, I'm terrified, and watch the relief come over him, because I can tell that's what he's braced for, that's the response he's built his whole careful blankness around. It would be the smart thing. Elsie would want me to say it and then walk away and never look back.

"I saw a boy who could have really hurt someone last night," I say instead. "And then didn't. You stopped. Most people who are actually dangerous don't stop." I shrug, like it's simple, like my heart isn't going too fast. "So no. I'm not afraid of you. I think you want people to be, though. I think you work at it."

Something moves behind his eyes. For a second the blankness cracks and I see something underneath it, and it's not what I expected. It's not danger. It's something closer to grief, quickly covered, the look of a person who's just been seen from an angle they thought they'd sealed off.

"You should go," he says, quieter. "Whatever you think you're doing here, you should go do it with someone else."

"After you help me. Favor, remember."

"Anna."

It's the first time he's said my name. Just my name, plain, and it does something to the pull in my chest that I refuse to examine in a school hallway with the two-minute bell about to go.

"It's nothing dramatic," I say, before he can finish whatever brush-off he's assembling. "I'm not asking you to walk me home or carry my books or anything that would ruin your whole lone-wolf mystique. I need help getting into the old records room to find my transfer paperwork. The office lost half of it and I need it for my scholarship and they keep telling me to come back later and later isn't coming. You clearly know how to get into places you're not supposed to be." I nod at the equipment room door down the hall, the one he opened for me when it was locked from the outside. "So. Help me. Then we're square and you never have to see me again. Which I know is what you want."

He's quiet for a long moment.

"That's the favor," he says. "Breaking into the records room."

"Not breaking in. I'm a student. It's my paperwork. It's barely even a crime."

"Barely."

"The best kind of crime is barely."

And there, finally, the smile gets past the guard. Just for a second, just a flash of the real one, crooked and warm and completely different from the careful face he wears, and it's so much better than the mask that it actually knocks the breath out of me a little. Then it's gone, packed away, and he's rubbing the back of his neck and looking down the hall like the exits might save him.

"Fine," he says. "After last period. Meet me by the gym doors."

"You're helping me."

"I'm getting rid of you," he corrects. "There's a difference. You collect your favor, we're square, you go back to your swim team and your sweet boyfriend and your normal life, and I go back to being someone you don't think about."

"Liam's not my boyfriend."

I don't know why I say it. It just comes out, and the second it's out I want it back, because his eyes come up to mine and hold there a beat too long, and something passes between us that has nothing to do with records rooms.

"After last period," he says again, rougher this time, and he turns to go.

"Wait." I catch his sleeve without thinking.

The second my fingers close on his arm, it happens.

I don't have a word for it. It's like touching a live wire, except it doesn't hurt, it's the opposite of hurt, a jolt that goes up my arm and lands somewhere in the middle of my chest, right where the ache has been living since the water. The pull I've been ignoring for days snaps taut, sudden and undeniable, like a line going tight when a fish hits, and for one dizzy second the whole loud hallway goes quiet and far away and there's just his arm under my hand and the warmth of him coming through his sleeve and the fact that he's gone completely rigid.

He felt it too.

I know he did. I watch it hit him, watch his whole body lock, watch his eyes go wide and then dark, and for a second neither of us moves, neither of us breathes, and the noise of the hall is a thousand miles away and there's just this, this thread pulling tight between us, this thing that has been there since the night I fell into the sea and that I have been calling a hundred other names.

Then he steps back, out of my grip, fast, like I've burned him.

"Don't," he says. His voice isn't steady. That's the thing I hold onto afterward. His voice, which is always so careful, isn't steady at all. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" My own voice comes out wrong. "I just grabbed your arm. What was that?"

"Nothing." He's already backing away, the mask slamming down, but it's too late, I've seen behind it now, I've felt behind it. "It was nothing. Static. Old building. Meet me by the gym after last period or don't. I don't care either way."

He does care. Everything about the way he's leaving says he cares enormously.

He turns and walks off fast, cutting through the thinning crowd, and I stand there with my hand still tingling and my heart slamming and the ache in my chest singing like a struck bell, watching him go, and I understand two things at once with total clarity.

The first is that whatever is happening to me, whatever that was, it's happening to him too. He felt exactly what I felt. I saw it on his face.

The second is that he's terrified of it. Not annoyed. Not playing hard to get. Genuinely, deeply afraid, the way you're afraid of a thing you know is bigger than you and coming anyway.

The bell rings. I'm late for second period and I don't move.

Static, he said. Old building.

I look down at my hand, at the fingers that touched his sleeve, still humming faintly like they remember something the rest of me is only starting to understand. And I think, no. That was not static. That was not nothing. That was the most something I have ever felt in my life, and he knew exactly what it was, and he lied to my face about it.

Which means he knows.

Whatever this is, whatever's been pulling at me since the water, he already knows what it is. And he's not going to tell me.

I'm definitely meeting him by the gym after last period. Not for the paperwork.

I make it to the second period late and slide into my seat with a mumbled excuse the teacher waves off. Elsie twists around from two rows up, mouths what happened, and I shake my head, because how would I even start. There's no version of it that doesn't sound insane. I touched a boy's sleeve and the whole world went quiet. My chest still aches like something in it got plucked and is still ringing. That's not a thing you can say out loud. That's not a thing that happens.

Stay away from Evan, she told me this morning. I've got a bad feeling. A real one.

And she's right. I know she's right. Every sensible part of me is standing up in the back of my head with its hand raised, reminding me that she is almost always right about this exact kind of thing, that trouble like Evan doesn't announce itself with warnings, that the smart move is to skip the gym, skip the favor, skip him, and go back to my ordinary life while I still have one.

I look down at my hand. The fingers that touched his sleeve are still faintly warm, still humming, like they're holding onto a note the rest of me can't hear anymore.

And I can't help but wonder if it would actually happen again if I touched him. If it was a one-time thing, some fluke of nerves and no sleep and a strange few days. Or if I put my hand on him a second time and the whole world drops away all over again.

I need to know. That's what I tell myself, anyway, because "need to know" sounds like curiosity, and curiosity is something I could still walk away from.

But under the fear, under the good sense, under every warning Elsie has ever given me, there's a smaller, quieter thing, and it isn't curiosity at all.

I want it to happen again.

I want to touch him again just to feel that pull go tight, to feel the noise of the world drop away, to feel, for one second, like I've been plugged into something I didn't know I'd been missing my whole life. It's got hooks in it, this wanting, and I don't have a name for it and I don't think I want one, because the moment I name it I'll have to admit how much trouble I'm actually in.

The teacher's voice drones on. I don't hear a word.

Three more periods until the gym doors.

I've never in my life wanted a school day to end so badly, and that, more than anything Elsie said, more than the fight, more than the fist in the air, is the thing that finally frightens me.