“How does guilt work, then?”
“Hell if I know. I’m very good at avoiding it.” She offered a rueful smile. “Deflection, remember? My signature move.”
His expression shifted. Softened, maybe. “You’re more than your deflections, Junie.”
“Please don’t psychoanalyze me before midnight. I don’t have the defenses for it.”
“That’s exactly when psychoanalysis works best.”
“Cruel.” She smiled, tension draining from her shoulders. “Is that the book about ley line manipulation?”
Leo reached for it at the same moment she did.
Their hands collided.
Not a brush. Not an accidental touch. Full contact—his fingers over hers, solid and very, very present.
Neither pulled away.
Junie stared at their joined hands, her pulse suddenly so loud, she was sure he could hear it. His skin was rougher than she’d expected, calloused in ways that didn’t match his pristine businessman image. His thumb moved—slightly—tracing a line across her knuckles.
“This is impossible,” Leo muttered.
Junie looked up. Found him watching her with an intensity that stole her breath.
“What is?”
He didn’t answer right away. He looked at her—really looked, the way he’d done that first morning in the breakfast room, the way that made her feel seen and exposed and terrified all at once.
“You,” he finally said. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s not—” She swallowed. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.” His voice had gone rough, scraped raw by what he wasn’t saying. “Nothing about this makes sense. You’re chaos incarnate. You’re everything I’ve spent my life avoiding. You make jokes when you should be serious and you argue with me about things that don’t matter and you leave pastries outside my door like it doesn’t mean anything?—”
“It doesn’t mean anything. They’re pastries.”
“They mean everything.” His thumb traced another line across her knuckles. “Everything you do means something, Junie. That’s the problem.”
The air between them had gone thick. Heavy. Charged with inevitability, like standing at the edge of a cliff and knowing you were going to jump.
“Leo—”
He pulled his hand back. Stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the lamp in his haste to put distance between them.
“I should go.” His voice was controlled again, that careful mask sliding back into place. “It’s late. We both need sleep.”
“Wait—”
But he was already at the door, already leaving, already rebuilding the walls she’d spent days watching him slowly dismantle.
“Goodnight, Junie.”
He left before she could respond.
Junie sat alone in the library, her hand still tingling where he’d touched her, Glimmer watching with eyes that saw too much.
You. You’re impossible.
