“Yeah. Just give me a minute to run up, okay?”

All I manage to do is nod. While I wait for him in the abandoned mini museum, my hood fastened tight around my swollen face again, doubt creeps into the corners of my mind. What if this is another prank? What if he comes back not with sunglasses, but with a group of people from our trip, so they can gather around and laugh at me? It’s exactly what the kids at my old schools would have done.

My heart thrums uneasily, the tension rippling down to my stomach. Maybe I should just make a run for it before he returns. Buy my own cream and my own sunglasses … I glance out in the direction of the lobby entrance. I have some time; I could escape if I hurried—

“Here you go.”

Cyrus appears around the corner, alone, a pair of sunglasses and small white tube in his hand, extended out toward me. Just as he promised.

“What?” He laughs quietly as I take the sunglasses first, my movements slow, cautious. I’m reminded of this documentary I once watched of this horse whisperer approaching a wild mare; he’d held out an apple and stayed very still, the way Cyrus is now, afraid to scare the creature away. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“No reason,” I say as I push the sunglasses up the bridge of my nose, still on the alert for the catch, the fine print, the open-trapdoor moment that’s surely going to teach me a lesson for trusting him, but nothing comes. And I’m struck by the growing evidence that I might have been wrong before. This whole being kind to me thing isn’t a ploy, a demonic scheme to ruin my life a second time. Cyrus Sui might not have any ulterior motive at all. As impossible as it sounds, as painful as it is to admit … he might actually, simply be offering me kindness because he wants to.

Cyrus grins all of a sudden, like he can’t help himself. “Hey, my sunglasses look good on you.”

I turn my head a fraction and see myself in the glass display. The sunglasses are bigger than anything I would’ve picked out for myself, the frames a little on the thicker side, the color solid black, more functional than fashionable. But privately, I like the way they look too.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In Shanghai, everything felt like it was sped-up.

The crowds streaming out of the subway station at five-minute intervals, swiping through emails or talking rapidly on their phones. The delivery workers rushing down the streets to drop off their next order while the food was still steaming hot. The baristas snatching empty cups from the marble counters and filling them up in a single streamlined movement. Even the elevators in our hotel were shockingly fast, the doors dinging open almost the instant you pressed the button.