“Good,” I say again, automatic. “So what does that have to do with?—”
“If it looks like I was being negligent,” she talks over me, words spilling like marbles, “or if it looks like I just moved here and torched my own studio to get a check?—”
“You didn’t,” I cut in, firm.
“I know that,” she says, eyes flashing, “and you know that, but he doesn’t know that. And Lottie said—and I didn’t even think about this, she just said it—‘well she can’t have done it on purpose, she’s getting married to the fire captain, he wouldn’t let that slide,’ and Tina was like, ‘that’s so true,’ so…yeah.”
I blink.
“So…yeah?” I repeat.
“So…now we’re engaged,” she finishes, hands flopping to her sides.
I stare at her for a good ten seconds. She fidgets under it, dragging a bare foot across the rug, chewing her lip.
“You couldn’t have told them the truth?” I ask finally.
“You couldn’t have smiled for five seconds?” she fires back.
My brows snap down. “What?”
“You growled the whole time I was at the station,” she says. “Lottie was scared of you.”
“Good.”
“Not good,” she huffs. “Scared people ask more questions. I was trying to make it look normal. Like we’re…together.”
“We’re not together.”
Her gaze drops to my mouth. Just for a beat.
Then back up.
“Then stop looking at me,” she says quietly, “like you wish we were.”
The room goes still.
She said it.
I don’t flinch.
Because she’s not wrong.
Idolook at her like that. I looked at her like that last night, ash-smeared and crying and still smart-mouthed when I dropped her off at my rental cabin. I looked at her like that at two in the damn morning when I replayed pulling her away from the door.
I just didn’t think she noticed.
I take a step forward.
She sucks in a breath but doesn’t retreat.
“You have no idea,” I say, voice low, “what I wish.”
Her pulse jumps in her throat. I see it. I want to put my mouth there.
But I don’t.
I drag a hand through my hair and force myself to back up two inches. “We’re not engaged, Ember.”
