were absolute opposites of the reality spectrum. ‘So, an endless supply of protein bars?’
‘And fruit bars, sometimes chocolate bars...’ He shrugged.
‘This isn’t just a bar at the bottom of your bag.’ She gazed at the compartment again. There had to be at least twenty different bars in there. ‘This is like survivalist mode.’
‘Like I’m prepped for the zombie apocalypse?’ He reached past her again and picked one with a scarlet and black wrapper, expertly tearing it and taking a bite while still driving.
‘You ever gone hungry for days on end?’ he asked after a moment.
‘No.’ She’d never gone without. Her meals had always been perfectly nutritionally balanced affairs, carefully prepared by the palace chefs. They still were. And she still put up with the annoying monthly medical checks with the palace physician—as she had all her life—because her advisors expected it. It was, now she thought about it, ridiculously over the top.
‘It’s not a nice feeling,’ he said.
She gazed at him, but he didn’t add anything more, he was too busy chewing. Deliberately avoiding answering her unspoken questions, she realised. A horrible sensation washed through her. Alvaro knew that feeling of hunger well. And she’d just been mentally moaning about her privileged palace food.
‘Go on, try it,’ he encouraged after a while, nodding to the bar she still held. ‘Don’t be polite, I know you’re starving.’
For diversion from those horrible thoughts as much as anything, she unwrapped it and took a bite.
‘Well?’ he asked, that laugh back in his voice.
‘It’s actually...not bad.’ She nodded.
‘I know.’ He laughed. ‘Take another for later.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not? As you can see, I have plenty.’
‘Do you get through them or do they get old and go to waste?’
‘None go to waste.’
She heard that hint of history again in the serious edge of his answer.
‘I give them away if they start to get too old. I don’t throw food out.’ Alvaro shook his head, regretting the small truths escaping him the way air escaped through the smallest tear in a once-tight seal.
He never discussed personal things, never answered to anyone, never hinted at what had once been... His past was irrelevant; his reasons for his action remained his own.
Yet here he was, telling her little truths that added up to a horror story. She wouldn’t know that though. She’d think he was just a perpetually hungry man mountain.
He tried to clear his head, but the scent of vanilla permeated the air. It wasn’t from the stupid snacks, it was her. He’d noticed it before and now, in the close confines of the car, it tantalised—making his mouth water and his body tense. He liked vanilla, a lot.
She’d fallen silent again, apparently focused on the road he was taking. Ironically her reticence bothered him more than the lapse of his own. She’d smiled at him before with that same open smile he’d seen first thing this morning when, oblivious to his presence, she’d got to her desk. When she’d turned it on him, it had almost caused him to veer off the road. But now she’d stilled, masking those turbulent emotions. He itched to brush the veil from her eyes so that mobility of expression was revealed. Because it was there. She was more sensitive, more volatile than he’d expected and yet, most of the time, so controlled.
He couldn’t shake the suspicion she was somehow vulnerable—which was stupid when she could clearly take care of herself. She didn’t need him getting all unnecessarily gallant... But he couldn’t stop his acute awareness of her, while a million and more questions mushroomed in his mind. Because while he couldn’t put his finger on it, something was off. Maybe the feeling was merely a residual hangover from that social media mess.
He should’ve cut himself free of that old app a while ago, but it had been his first success and he’d been loath to lose anything from his arsenal of enterprise. Back when Plan A—to be a professional sportsman—had been destroyed when the ligaments in his knee had been torn, that little idea he’d had, when he’d been captain of the school basketball, football and volleyball teams all at once, had come into its own. He’d been desperate not just to survive, but to succeed at getting out of the poverty hell he’d been in for ever. To escape that insecurity and lift his elderly foster carer, Ellen, with him. And he had. All on his own—with the determined independence he still treasured.
‘This is where you live?’ he