Chapter 7 — Paper-Thin Walls

Marlowe Nobody mentioned the bathroom situation until it was already too late to do anything about it, which felt, at this point, like the running theme of my entire life. "East wing's got four rooms and one shower," Nova said cheerfully, dumping my one duffel bag onto a bunk like it weighed nothing, which it nearly did, since everything I owned currently fit inside it. "You, me, two guys who snore like dying engines, and King's room right at the end of the hall. Lucky you." "Lucky me," I repeated, already doing math I didn't like the answer to. "Could be worse." She dropped onto the bunk across from mine, kicking her boots off with the careless confidence of someone who had never once had to think about which parts of her body a shower schedule might expose. "Could've put you on kitchen duty with Reid. At least here, the worst thing sharing a wall with King means is you'll hear him up at weird hours. Guy barely sleeps." "Define weird hours." "Three, four in the morning, sometimes. Bear says he's always been like that. Since before my time." She shrugged, the topic clearly not carrying the weight for her that it suddenly did for me. "Anyway. Shower's first come, first served, and those two—" she jerked a thumb at the empty bunks by the door, "—get up at five and hog it till five-thirty. You want privacy, go earlier." I filed that away like it was the most important tactical intelligence I'd ever received. It was, honestly, close. --- I lay awake that night longer than I wanted to, listening to a building settle around me in unfamiliar creaks, and somewhere past midnight I heard it — a low sound through the wall, not quite a groan, not quite a word, the particular restless noise of someone caught in a dream they didn't want. King's voice, muffled, saying a name I didn't catch clearly enough to be sure of. Something with a soft middle and a hard ending. Gone before I could hold onto it. I told myself it wasn't my business. I told myself that for a long time, lying there in the dark, listening to the President of the Ironclad Wolves fight something in his sleep that sounded a lot less like a rival club and a lot more like grief. I didn't sleep much after that. Partly the noise. Mostly the unhelpful, unwelcome fact that some part of me wanted to know what — or who — put that sound in his throat. --- I got up at four-thirty, which felt insane and also felt like my only option, and grabbed my wrap and a change of clothes and made it to the shower before either of my snoring roommates had so much as twitched. I want to say the plan worked perfectly. It worked for exactly six minutes. I had the wrap half off, my back to the door, water running to cover any sound, when I heard footsteps in the hallway outside — not the heavy, half-asleep shuffle of a prospect stumbling toward the sink, but something more awake than that, more deliberate, the kind of walk that belonged to someone who didn't sleep well and had given up trying an hour ago. The footsteps stopped outside the bathroom door. I froze, wrap dangling from one hand, heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat, and did the fastest mental math of my life. The lock — did I lock it? I'd locked it. I was almost sure I'd locked it. Almost wasn't the same as certain, and certain was the only thing that mattered right now with my whole disguise hanging half-undone in a room with paper-thin walls and a King who apparently prowled the halls at four in the morning like a man who trusted nothing, including sleep. The handle turned. It caught, once, against the lock — thank every god I didn't believe in strongly enough to thank properly — and stopped. "Occupied," I managed, and my voice came out rougher than I meant it to, low enough to pass, I hoped, for a boy who'd just woken up and not a girl mid-heart-attack. A pause on the other side of the door. Long enough that I could hear my own pulse over the running water. "Finch." King's voice, quiet, close enough to the door that I understood exactly how thin the wood between us actually was. "You're up early." "Couldn't sleep." True, at least. Another pause. I stood there dripping, wrap clutched to my chest, praying to a God I hadn't spoken to since I was small enough to still believe one was listening, that he'd just walk away. "Neither could I," he said instead, and I heard him lean against the door frame, unhurried, in absolutely no rush to leave. "Funny thing about this club, Finch. Everybody's got a reason they can't sleep. I'm starting to wonder what yours is." The water kept running. My hands had gone completely still, wrap forgotten, every muscle in my body locked around the sound of his voice sitting right on the other side of one thin, badly-timed door.