Chapter 18 · Whoever Holds The Panel

"Say it again."

His voice comes out low, right against my ear, and the inhaler is still shut inside his fist between us. I can feel the plastic edge of it pressing into my sternum through his knuckles.

"No one knows," I say. "I told you. It's mine. I pack my own bag."

"Liar." He doesn't say it mean. He says it like a fact he already filed. "You don't sew a second one into a coat lining unless somebody taught you how to bleed through a seam ripper without cutting your own thumb."

"Maybe I'm just good with my hands."

"Ira."

The way he says my name should not do what it does to my knees. I hate that it does it anyway. His chest is a wall of heat two inches off mine, and I can smell engine grease and river water and something underneath that's just him, and my lungs are doing the thing they do when the air gets thin — except the air isn't thin, it's just him, standing too close, breathing like he's counting my ribs from the outside.

Then the light changes.

It's small. A stutter behind his shoulder.