"Misato."
"I said don't." But she didn't step back. If anything she moved closer, and I could smell the salt and the sweat and the specific thing that was just her, ocean-air-after-a-storm, the scent I'd noticed once and filed away and pretended I hadn't. "I've spent nine years learning how to lose people, okay? That's the whole job. Blair's family, they take. They took my mom's back with the hours they work her. They took my scholarship and made it a leash. I learned real early that if you care about something, someone with more money decides when you get to keep it. So I stopped. I made myself the person who handles things. The one who doesn't need. Because needing is how they get you."
I stayed quiet. This was the most words I'd ever heard string out of Misato Ayame that weren't formation calls, and every single one of them cost her something, and I wasn't going to be the idiot who interrupted it.
