Chapter 11: No Crumbs

Beck lived in the rooms above the diner kitchen, where the floor stayed warm from the ovens all night.

I climbed the back stairs at eleven, past the flour sacks.

I knocked on his open door.

He was sitting on the bed with a mug in his hands and his boots off.

"I'd have come down," he said. "I didn't think you wanted company."

"I want company. I want yours."

He put the mug on the floor.

I closed the door behind me and stayed against it.

"I need to ask you something, and I want the truth," I said.

"I'm a very honest cook."

"If the Elder cut your thread tomorrow, would you still be here?"

He didn't joke. That was how I knew he'd been thinking about it.

"Yes," he said.

"You'd feel nothing."

"My heartbeat would get turned down. It'd be awful."

He rubbed his thumb along his jaw.

"And I'd still be sitting on this bed, hoping you'd come up the stairs."

"Why?"

"Because you took a knife out of my brother's hand."

"Because you put your fist into a bowl of dough."

"Because you looked at my crumbs and told me the standard."

"That's not the bond."

"The bond just told me where to look," he said. "The rest I did on my own."

Something in my chest unclenched.

For days I'd been afraid of one thing.

I had thought every kind word and every warm look was the thread pulling their strings.

This was not the thread.

I crossed the room and stood between his knees.

"Beck," I said.

"Yes."

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