The cab smelled faintly of leather and rain.
Evan sat beside me with one hand resting near his ribs. He probably thought I hadn’t noticed every time a pothole made his mouth tighten.
I had.
"What did Talia actually do?"
He looked over. "You’re still on that?"
"She hit you."
"That does seem to be the central issue."
I gave him a look.
"Evan."
He sighed and turned toward the window.
"I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see."
"What?"
"Something I’m not discussing in a cab."
Annoyingly reasonable.
"And instead of walking away?"
"I wanted to know what it was."
I studied him.
"You knew it could be dangerous?"
"Not that dangerous."
"But you followed anyway."
He gave a small shrug.
"Apparently."
That didn’t fit comfortably with the Evan I thought I knew.
Then again, very little about tonight did.
I watched the city slide past the window for a while before looking at him again.
"Can I ask you something?"
His mouth twitched.
"You’ve never needed permission before."
"Why do you let people do that?"
He frowned.
"Do what?"
"Decide where you stand."
Nothing.
"Isabella. Grant. People at Aurelia." I hesitated. "Me."
That got his attention.
"What about you?"
"You let me use you."
He didn’t even pretend not to understand.
Research. Presentations. Fixing numbers. Taking things off my desk because I knew he’d do them properly.
"So you knew?"
"Most of the time."
I stared at him.
"That makes it worse."
"How?"
"Because you’re socially incompetent."
Now he stared at me.
I almost laughed.
"No, seriously. If you knew what I was doing, you had options. You could’ve made me ask properly. Traded favors instead of giving them away for free. Helped me privately and made sure Rachel knew whose work it actually was."
I lifted another finger.
"Or said yes once and no the next time so I didn’t start assuming you’d do whatever I handed you."
Evan watched me for a second.
"Very constructive."
"I’m serious. You understood the game and still somehow played it badly."
His expression flattened.
"I survived."
"That’s not the same as winning."
That shut him up.
Good.
After a moment, he shifted carefully against the seat.
"You were sixth."
I blinked.
"What?"
"In the rankings. Rachel liked you. Naomi knew who you were. You walked into rooms expecting people to listen."
"And?"
"I was close enough to the cut line that one bad rotation mattered. What exactly was I supposed to do? Start a political war because you made me fix a deck?"
"You didn’t need a war."
"Easy for you to say."
I turned toward him.
"No. Easy for me to do. That’s the point."
His mouth twitched.
"You could’ve pushed back without making yourself my enemy."
"Would you have stopped?"
I opened my mouth.
Then closed it.
"Probably not."
"Exactly."
That annoyed me more than it should have.
"It still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have tried."
Silence settled between us.
I looked at him more carefully.
"You really knew what I was doing?"
"Camila, you weren’t subtle."
"Asshole."
"You asked."
I should’ve been offended.
Instead, I smiled.
That annoyed me too.
"So why didn’t you ever say anything?"
He looked out the window again.
"Because fighting people usually cost me more than letting them think they’d won."
That was different.
Not passive.
Calculated.
Not necessarily well calculated, but still.
"You make it sound strategic."
"Some of it was."
I waited.
He noticed.
"Some?"
A brief pause.
"Sometimes I was just scared of making things worse."
The honesty caught me off guard.
No joke. No excuse.
Just the answer.
"I knew what people were doing," he continued. "Most of the time. I just didn’t have enough leverage to make stopping them worth it."
That stayed with me.
Not enough leverage.
Maybe Evan had never misunderstood the game.
Maybe he’d simply spent years playing without enough pieces.
I looked at his split lip.
Tonight he’d followed something dangerous because he wanted answers, and whatever had happened afterward, Talia clearly hadn’t gotten everything she wanted.
"What happens when you do?"
He turned back.
"When I do what?"
"Have leverage."
His eyes stayed on mine.
"I guess we’re finding out."
Something tightened pleasantly low in my stomach.
I blamed the night.
That explanation was becoming less convincing.
We stopped for takeout before reaching his apartment.
My decision.
The Quest required food.
Obviously.
His apartment was cleaner than I’d expected.
Also emptier.
A couch, television, desk, two monitors, books and paperwork. Everything had a purpose. Almost nothing looked like he’d chosen it simply because he liked it.
Then I opened the refrigerator.
Four eggs.
Mustard.
Half a bottle of water.
I turned around.
"You weren’t joking."
"About?"
"Having food."
"I wasn’t."
I looked into the refrigerator again.
"This is evidence, Evan."
He laughed, then immediately winced.
My annoyance returned.
"Sit."
"I am sitting."
"Good. You’re learning."
I found frozen vegetables and wrapped them in a towel.
Then I looked at him.
"Take your shirt off."
His eyebrows rose.
"That escalated quickly."
"For your ribs."
"Right."
He sounded suspiciously disappointed.
"Evan."
"Fine."
He pulled the shirt over his head.
And I stopped.
Only for a second.
Hopefully.
He looked better than I’d expected.
Not ridiculous. Just leaner than his clothes suggested, with decent shoulders and more definition through his stomach and chest than I’d given him credit for.
Apparently his wardrobe had been committing crimes.
Evan caught me looking.
Normally, he would’ve looked away.
He didn’t.
His eyes stayed on mine.
Something shifted in my stomach again.
Oh.
That was new.
I pushed the cold pack into his hands.
"Hold that."
His mouth curved.
"Yes, ma’am."
God.