He tilts his head. “What was that?”
“Oh, um, what’s your favorite color?” I blurt.
He crosses his arms over his chest and settles back against the counter like he’s watching a show, and I suppose he is. “That seems like a wasted question.”
I groan. He’s right. “Let me start again?—”
“Nope.” He shakes his head, grin widening. “No going back on the rules. I answer, and you take something off.”
I purse my lips. “Fine,” I say, pretending to be annoyed even as a spark of heat races through me. “But you’re only getting a sock for this one.”
“Favorite color’s green.”
I peel off one fuzzy pink sock and toss it at him. He ducks, and it lands somewhere behind him on the kitchen floor.
“Next question,” he says, still smiling.
I narrow my eyes. “Wait a second. I’m not getting anything out of this game.”
His brow lifts. “You’re the one who made the rules.”
“And I’m the only one who can change them. New rule,” I declare. “For every question I ask, you have to ask me one too.”
“And take off something when you give me an honest answer?”
“Oh yeah.” I lean against the armchair and grin right back at him. “Let’s see what you’re packing under all that middle-of-nowhere lumberjack accoutrement.”
“Accoutrement?”
“I can know big French words.”
His chuckle is low and wraps around me like a furry blanket. “Guess it’s my turn.” He stares at me with those gray eyes, and my body gets warm all over. “Why don’t you want a mate?”
“Wow. Starting off with a bang.”
“A sugary bang,” he shoots back with an actual wink. “At my age, you learn not to waste your questions.”
I roll my eyes in an attempt to disguise the blush creeping up my neck from that wink. “Okay, fine. You want the truth?”
“That’s the rule, isn’t it?”
I take a deep breath, fingers worrying the hem of my sweater. “My fated mate broke my heart last solstice,” I say, and immediately regret how small my voice sounds. “Spectacularly and very publicly. Just like that.” I snap my fingers. “He dropped me for someone else.”
The words taste bitter even now.
“And I had to stand there in front of my family and friends and basically everyone I’ve ever known and smile just so I wouldn’t fall apart. So…yeah. I can’t trust fate,” I finish quietly, “and I definitely can’t trust my own instincts when it comes to love. Better off alone than looking like a clown.”
I can’t bring myself to look at him, not yet. The last thing I want to see is pity—or worse, amusement—etched across his face. Like I’m just some silly girl who should’ve learned her lesson by now. Who should’ve built thicker skin, stopped whining, moved on.
A soft sound breaks the quiet, fabric whispering against wood. His white thermal top slides across the floor and comes to rest at my feet.
“Felt like that deserved a whole shirt,” West says.
A soft smile lifts the corner of my mouth, and I look up at him then. Firelight paints him in gold and shadow. He’s all solid planes and hard lines. The muscles across his chest move as he shifts, tensing and relaxing beneath sun kissed skin. Silver threads through the dark dusting of hair on his chest, glinting like metal.
Heat rolls through me, sharp and greedy, and when my eyes meet his, my breath catches in my throat. He looks at me like he recognizes every raw, aching piece of what I just confessed because he carries it too.
The room goes still. The fire crackles, snow sighs against the windows, and the space between us seems to shrink before he murmurs, “Your turn, Emme.”
