Fake it with me
He looked at her across the bench, at the girl who walked into rooms and made people wonder if they were doing enough, at the composed and controlled and occasionally terrifying Ava Bennett, and he thought about what he had seen through the gap in the practice room door, the quieter version, the one that remembered being afraid and used it to help someone else through the same thing without making it about herself, without taking credit for it, without letting anyone who mattered see it happen.
"You're different when you think nobody's watching," he said.
She looked at him sharply.
"Not worse," he said. "Different. Better, maybe. More like a person."
"I'm always a person," she said, with an