“Did you sleep okay?” she asked.

I shut the door and followed her farther inside. “Not really.”

She glanced at me, mouth parted in an O. “Was it the bed? I keep telling Aggie she needs to replace the mattress in here. It’s super-old. I’m sorry if it was hard as a rock. I could get you some extra blankets for padding or—”

“It wasn’t the bed.” I cracked a knuckle. “It was probably the hangover.”

“Oh.” Her eyes scanned the room, as if searching for the evidence. When she found nothing, she flicked again to me. “You came home late.”

Her lips tightened with regret. She hadn’t meant to admit she’d noticed when I’d returned.

“I ran into an old friend,” I said.

“Who?”

“His name is Trev.”

“Is he still in town? You could invite him over for dinner tonight.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

She gestured to the table. “Can I sit?”

“Sure.” I hurried to the table and swiped the recoil spring I’d forgotten to put away. “You want some coffee?”

“I can get it.”

She set the bag of food on the table and went to the cupboard above the drawer with my hidden gun. She knew what I used to do, she knew about the Branch, but how would she feel if she knew I had a gun with me now?

When her cup was full, she took the chair directly across from me, her hair falling forward on her shoulders. The morning sunlight pouring through the window behind her lit her hair, turning it amber.

I looked down at my own cup.

Elizabeth handed me a napkin and then a blueberry muffin. I rocked back on the chair on two legs and tugged open the silverware drawer to grab a fork. She gave me an odd look.

“You’re going to eat a muffin with a fork?”

“Less mess,” I said, which made her smile. Which almost made me smile.

We ate in silence for a beat.

“Do you have any plans for today?” she asked.

I did. I had a lot of plans. Unfortunately, they all hinged on Trev not being an asshole. “Not yet.”

“I have to work, unfortunately.” She sipped from her coffee, holding the cup with both hands. There were rings on her middle and pointer fingers on one hand, and one on her thumb on the other. I wasn’t close enough to make out the details, but the ring on her pointer finger looked like a feather.

“What’s your shift?” I asked.

“Two to eight.”

I bit my bottom lip, debating. But the question came out before I could squash it. “Do you want to do something tonight? Together?”

She lifted her chin to look me straight on. The move elongated her neck, exposing the soft skin just below her ear. I thought about kissing her there. I thought about doing other things with her.

“Yeah,” she answered, and for a second, I totally forgot what I’d asked her. “Do you have anything in mind?”

I shrugged and tore my gaze away from her neck. “You’re the Trademarr expert. Have any suggestions?”

Hitting on girls was my superpower, but I was having one hell of a time sounding competent at it. It was probably my conscience telling me to back off. Not this girl. And definitely not right now.

“Let me think about it.” The corner of her mouth quirked into a half grin. “I’ll try to come up with something not totally lame. Though I’m not making any promises.”

“I won’t hold you to it.”

The grin widened. She set her cup down. “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“I…” She spun the feather ring around her finger. Over and over again. “This is going to sound silly, but I feel like you’ve never left. Like you’ve always been here.”

The apartment grew sticky with the silence that followed. I didn’t know how to respond to that without sounding like a total jackass.

“I’m sorry,” she added quickly. “I know that sounds dumb.”

“It doesn’t.”

She pulled the ring up over her knuckle, then shoved it back down again. “Where have you been all this time?”

I debated telling her about the lab, about the Altered program, but decided against it. It was old news, and it didn’t have anything to do with her.

“I was tied up for a long time.” Almost literally.

“Mmm.”

She did that a lot, made a noise that was part hum, part moan. Like a sound was better than a word, like a sound was all she could manage.

“How did you get out?” I asked suddenly. “Wherever they were keeping you. How did you escape?”

I’d been wondering about this for a while, since I read the news article, since I realized she’d escaped before I’d even met her in the forest.

“Someone let me out,” she said, and hung her head, staring at her coffee trapped between her hands. “They opened the cell door and led me to an air vent and told me which way to go to crawl out.”

I leaned forward over the table. “Did you see who it was?”

She shook her head quickly. “I never saw a face. It was a woman, that’s all I know.”

“Did she follow you out?”

“No. She said she would get my mother, but…” The open-ended sentence said enough.

“That kind of thing happens a lot with the Branch,” I said. “People dying. People you care about.”