“I do,” I said. “Should be easy, then.”
He let out a small laugh that warmed the air between us. “Fine. I can manage the long journey to the next house.”
I stepped closer, just enough to feel the heat of him, and pointed down the walkway. “That way.”
I adjusted the strap on my shoulder and made my way down the front steps. He followed, closing the door softly behind us. He headed right toward Bel House. I went left.
He stopped. “That’s the wrong way.”
I kept walking in the opposite direction. “Figured I could lure you out for a walk.”
He looked down the dark sidewalk that curved between two rows of quiet, leafless trees. “A walk where, exactly?”
“Campus,” I said. “It is peaceful at night.And we did defeat a tower full of undead worms. Seems like we earned fresh air.”
He shook his head in quiet disbelief and finally came toward me. His steps were reluctant in the way people pretend to resist when they have already decided to join you. He reached my side and pulled his scarf closer to his chin. It was patterned with little constellations that I had not noticed earlier.
The quad waited ahead in near silence. Fallen leaves scattered by the wind across the stone paths. A few windows in the older dorms held warm glows, but most of campus rested in darkness with nothing but the soft hum of distant machinery. Our steps rang softly against the pavement. The cold sharpened the smell of trimmed grass and faint woodsmoke from some unseen chimney.
Bennet walked with his shoulders tight, as if he had left the safety of the organized world inside those walls. He glanced around in that cautious way I had seen in our tutoring sessions, though his guard softened once we reached the quiet heart of campus.
“Is this your secret training ground?” he asked.
“Something like that. I run here sometimes when the field is booked.”
He nodded. “I imagined you sticking to the areas with goalposts and loud people.”
“Sometimes even I like peace,” I said. “Not often. But enough.”
He looked sideways at me. The corner of his mouth barely lifted, and the faint smile sent a tiny kickthrough my chest. People smiled at me all the time, but this one landed differently. It came from somewhere careful and private.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You come out here for stargazing.”
“Only when I can’t sleep. Which is often.”
“Because of equations,” I guessed.
“And noise,” he said. “And my own brain.”
We crossed through the quad. The old library towered over us with its stone columns and tall windows that reflected the moon. Bennet slowed his steps to look at it. He seemed smaller in front of such a building, yet more a part of it, too. The halo of light from above caught the slope of his cheek and the soft curl at the top of his hair.
“You looked happy tonight,” I said quietly.
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Rowan is a talented storyteller. And the group is fun when they don’t shoot arrows at newcomers.”
“He didn’t trust Dud.”
“Nobody should trust Dud,” Bennet replied, though he smiled a little more this time. “Dud knows more than he’s saying.”
Or maybe he’s just very confused and a little afraid, so he compensates with his loud and annoying sense of humor, I thought helplessly.
I studied him while we walked. His eyes had the same shape as when he frowned over textbooks, a narrow focus that made the corners tilt slightly. His eyelashes cast longshadows, and the movement of his mouth had a subtle rhythm as he talked. I hadn’t noticed any of these things clearly until this moment. Now I saw too much. I saw the warmth in his cheeks from the cold, the faint shine from the streetlight against his glasses, the shape of his lips.
His lips.
That thought slid in without warning and made my chest tighten.
“You surprised me,” Bennet said.