everywhere and nowhere. Occasionally, if new threats emerge associated with old enemies, old jobs, I’ll work. But none of that affects our lives here. We told you this when we moved here. Now you have to trust us.”
Trust. It’s such a complicated word. How can I trust them when they neither lie nor tell the complete truth?
“Nemcova,” I say abruptly, pleased my father looks surprised. “Who is she?”
“Ola Nemcova is an old colleague,” my mother answers calmly, rising to her feet. She presses out the pleats in her slacks. “Are you hungry, sweetheart? I made baguettes and vichyssoise.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“What about Aksel? Have you both eaten?”
“He left.”
My mother points over my shoulder. “He’s outside.”
I whirl around.
“You never heard him drive away, did you?” she reprimands me.
Anger flares inside me. Isn’t that why we moved here? So I wouldn’t have to pay attention to every sound, every noise?
I run back outside. Aksel unfolds his hands and closes the distance between us in several strides.
“What are you still doing here?” My body pulses.
He scans my face. “I had to know you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” I snap. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
His expression hardens as he tucks his hands into his pockets.
I stare at Aksel’s guarded face, searching for answers: Why did he stay?
He lifts his eyes from mine. They refocus on my parents. Standing in the window. Watching us.
“I’ll leave, okay?” With a swift kiss on my cheek, Aksel gets into the Defender.
Ignoring my parents’ eyes drilling into the back of my head, I duck around the hood, open the passenger door, and get in.
“Drive,” I order.
Moments later, steep cliffs enclose us in a granite cocoon. As we near the bend around Eagle Peak, Aksel brakes and steers over to a landing on the shoulder. He stops with the wheels a meter from the ravine edge and shifts the car into park.
“What’s going on, Sophia?” he demands.
I wanted to drive—not talk. Talking means confronting it, and I don’t want to confront it. I am trembling again. A cold sweat has broken out on my forehead. I loop my thumbs into the wrist straps on my sweater.
Aksel knows I have a past—does he know more than he’s letting on?
“Why did you really stay?” I plead.
Affronted, he glares at me. “Because I was worried, Sophia!”
“Why?” I prompt. “I was just going home!”
Aksel drags his hands over his forehead. Then he walks around to my side and opens my door. Behind him is the steep summit of Eagle Peak. In the starlight I see the sharp edges of the rocks we climbed. It’s hard to believe there was a time when I barely knew Aksel, when he only knew me as that girl from Berlin.
He drapes his arm on the door. His jaw is clenched tight, as though he’s trying to conceal emotions.
“Look, I don’t know what happened before you came to Waterford and I don’t need to—I respect your privacy, your past—but that also means I don’t know whether you’re going to be staying or leaving …” He trails off.
Leaving. Is that what this is about?
“And what about you?” I say hotly, exposing my own fears. “Am I supposed to believe your training, your classes, your target practice is simply for the Academy?”
“I intend to be prepared,” Aksel says dismissively. “That’s all.”
“Fine. I intend to stay in Waterford,” I retort.
Aksel’s mouth tightens. “That’s what worries me. You’re not necessarily making the decisions.”
“Things are different here,” I say emphatically.
“Are they?”
“Yes! So you shouldn’t worry about me, Aksel.”
Aksel stares at me audaciously. “Well, I do. A lot.”
“So, stop!”
“You’d rather I not care?” Aksel appears incredulous; his eyebrows furrow over his wide, emerald eyes. “Sophia, do you realize that every night when I go to bed, I wonder if I’m going to wake up in the morning and find out you’re gone?”
I bite my lip, pushing aside the voice in my head echoing Aksel’s concerns.
I’m safe here. Safe.
“That won’t happen.” My voice is barely audible. “Not anymore. Not here.”
Aksel’s shoulders flex beneath his sweater; he is still holding fiercely onto my hand, as if I’ll dissolve into air if he lets go.
“You’re right,” he finally says, “it probably won’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t worry about it. I care about you, Sophia. A lot. Too much, possibly.”
We have never discussed it—this inexplicable communication between us, this ability to understand so much about each other in so little time—but it’s here, right now, like an electric current between us.
There is more to this. More to Aksel. More to