REED
I had made a reservation at a restaurant forty minutes off campus.
Not somewhere that announced itself. No academy connections, no familiar faces that would carry news back to anyone within these walls. Just a quiet place with good food, low lighting and enough distance from Stone Claw Academy that for a few hours we could exist without the full weight of everything that came with existing there.
I had chosen it carefully, more carefully than I had chosen anything in a long time.
The car ride started quiet. Not the uncomfortable kind of quiet that needs filling with noise. The kind that two people settle into when something new is sitting between them and neither of them has ,deci,ded yet how to hold it. I drove ,wit,h one hand on the wheel and the city lights moving past the windows and Asher sat in the passenger seat looking out at everything with his hands folded in his lap.
