“That’s amazing,” I gushed, but it would have been a terrible lie to say I didn’t feel a pang of jealousy in how much progress she had made. I had only been able to block Clancy out of my mind once, and not before he had found out about what had happened to Sam.

“Interesting” had been his only comment.

While I saw Zu and Chubs every day, Liam was a completely different matter. The security team had him scheduled for the second watch—five p.m. to five a.m.—all the way at the far west end of the lake. He was usually too tired to stumble back to the cabin after his shift, and spent most of his days sleeping in the tents they had set up near that entrance. I saw him once or twice talking animatedly to a crowd at breakfast, or visiting with Zu at Cubbies, but it was always from the window of Clancy’s room.

I missed him to the point of a real, physical ache, but I understood that he had responsibilities. When I had a thought to spare, it usually went to him, but I was so focused on my lessons that it was hard to let my mind drift to anything else for too long.

Clancy laughed, drawing my attention back to him from the window, and I suddenly wasn’t sure how I could let my thoughts wander. He was wearing a white polo shirt that emphasized the natural glow of his skin, and pressed khaki pants casually rolled at the ankle. Whenever he was out with others, he was properly buttoned up, his clothes clean and ironed within an inch of their lives—but not with me.

Here, we didn’t have to put on any show. Not for each other.

When we first started these lessons, it had been from either side of his ridiculous desk; it felt like I was squaring off against a school principal, not being guided through a Psi lesson by my freak guru. Next, we had tried the floor, but after a few hours of sitting, my back felt like it was ready to crumble. He had been the one to suggest sitting on his narrow bed. He had taken one end and I had taken the other. Then, we started inching closer. Bridging the distance on his red quilt, nearer to each other with each lesson, until one day I snapped out of whatever haze Clancy’s dark eyes had put me in and realized our knees were pressed up against one another.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, when I turned back toward him. “Can we go from the top?”

He found everything about me amusing, apparently. “Take it from the top? Are we rehearsing for a play? Should I get Mike in here to start building props?”

I’m not sure why I laughed at that—it wasn’t even all that funny. Maybe trying to throw my brain at his for the last twenty minutes had made me loopy. The only thing I seemed sure of was how big and reassuring his hand felt as it took mine and squeezed.