"You're worried."
"Get out of my head."
"It's true though, right?"
Bel is looking out the passenger window, and Kam is looking straight ahead, but he can feel the tension radiating off the younger boy in waves.
"Bellamy."
"Stop using my full name."
"Stop overthinking."
"I'm not. I'm fine."
While they were at Gulf's condo, Bel had been too focused on Nina to think about anything else. But that was no longer the case, and Kam had been around Bel long enough to understand that the boy had a tendency to overthink, just like he was doing now.
"Bel."
"I said--"
"I heard what you said," Kam cuts off Bel mid-protest. "Try saying something else. Like why you're tying your brain in knots."
"It's going to be me next time," Bel says it out loud on purpose, to make it real, so that his brain will understand what he heard earlier tonight. "He didn't find what he wanted with Nina, so he'll come after me, and this time it won't look like an accident."
"Bel," Kam pushes. "You need to breathe."
"I am breathing!"
"You know what I mean."
Another silence. A silence that lasts the rest of the drive home. As Kam pulls the car into the driveway and turns off the ignition, he looks over at the boy that he's falling for. Bel looks so lost and helpless, it makes Kam's heart crack open.
"Bel."
"I hate this." Bel bursts out. "I hate that I have a target on my back and I don't know why. I hate that my sister was attacked and I couldn't do anything about it. I hate that I've spent the past week looking at old files that make no sense. I hate that now I'm waiting for some psycho to do to me what he tried to do to Nina. I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do."
Kam is quiet for a minute. "You know I'm not going to let anything happen to you, right?"
"I know," Bel doesn't sound very confident, though whether that lack of confidence is in himself or in Kam is unclear. He's still looking out the window, his body rigid, hands knotted together, clenched so tight his knuckles are standing out under his skin.
"Bel," Kam takes one of those tense knotted hands in his, stroking his thumb across those white knuckles. "I am not going to let anything happen to you. And not just because your sister is paying me a fortune to keep you alive."
"That's not funny." But Bel's body is relaxing ever so slightly, and his lips curve up. It's a tiny smile, but a smile, nonetheless.
"It's a little funny." Kam squeezes Bel's hand. "Adorable kid."
"Annoying jackass."
Bel gets out of the car first and goes into the house. The kitchen table is still covered in paper copies of the files that he made for Kam, and that damn USB is still plugged into his laptop. Maybe they shouldn't have left all those files out for anyone to see. Determined people can break into the most secure of houses, and Bel doesn't exactly have a state of the art security system.
He didn't think he needed one until tonight.
Bel walks over and pulls the USB out of the flash drive port. It's warm from being plugged in for so long. How could such a tiny insignificant looking object cause so much trouble?
