"His words smelled like Georgia pines."
The confrontation with Eli had left Silver feeling like she'd been hit by a hockey puck traveling at full speed—rattled, disoriented, and acutely aware that she'd sustained damage she couldn't immediately assess. The walk back from Ingalls through Yale's Gothic labyrinth had been a blur of stone arches and diamond-paned windows glowing with security lighting, her mind replaying his words with the obsessive precision she'd once brought to analyzing failed jumps.
I know him better than you think.
The certainty in Eli's voice had shaken something loose inside her chest, a doubt that had been carefully buried under weeks of telling herself that Carroway's attention was harmless, that his smooth words and calculated charm were preferable to Eli's complicated silences and volcanic eruptions of feeling.
