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A branch breaks behind me, and I scramble to my feet, almost overturning the bucket in my haste. I’m already reaching for my knife when Bishop appears; I know even his silhouette so well I can pick him out of the near-darkness.
“I said I didn’t need any help,” I tell him, my hand falling away from my knife.
“I figured I’d give you a hand anyway,” he says, reaching for the bucket. I swing it away from him and turn back toward the house.
“I’m surprised you were willing to leave your card game,” I say. Even as I’m speaking, I’m telling myself to shut up, but my mouth is one step ahead of my brain. Apparently that hasn’t changed. “You and Ash seemed to be having a great time. Very cozy.” Just hearing the words makes me cringe. I never wanted to be t
his kind of girl. I never thought I was.
Bishop’s hand snakes forward and grabs the handle of the bucket, forcing me to stop. “Are you done?” he asks. He sounds utterly exhausted, worn beyond the point of endurance.
I shrug, keeping my back to him.
“You honestly believe I’m falling for Ash?” he asks me. “That we would ever look at each other that way?”
“No,” I say on a whisper. I know that’s not how they feel about each other, just as I know neither one of them would ever hurt me intentionally.
“Then say what you mean,” he demands, giving the bucket a slight shake. “Or just”—he blows out a breath—“shut up.”
I whirl on him, forcing him to loosen his grip on the bucket. Water sloshes over the side and down my leg, soaking my pants. “Shut up? Shut up?”
He stares at me, his eyes a cool, glowing green in the moonlight. “We can’t keep doing this, Ivy,” he says. “I can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what?” I ask and feel an immediate flush of shame. I’m the one playing games now, no better than Callie.
“Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Then maybe you should leave,” I say, even as my heart protests the words. “Go back to Westfall. I know you probably want to.” Just the thought of waking up tomorrow and not seeing his face makes panic rise up in my chest, squeezing my heart like a cold fist.
“Why would you say that?” His eyes bore into mine, his jaw tight. He is teetering right on the edge of losing his temper; one hard nudge from me and he’ll fall.
“I know you’re angry with me, Bishop. When are you going to admit it?”
“Of course I’m angry,” he says, taking a step toward me. I take a step back to compensate. “I’ve never denied it. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Maybe.” My heart knocks against my ribs. I’m terrified suddenly of where this is leading, whether I’m brave enough to make my own admissions in return. I wish I’d kept my mouth shut, gone back to the house and crawled into bed. But how many more nights can we do that before he turns away instead of holding me, before I wake up one morning and he really is gone?
“Okay, then,” Bishop says, voice rising, “I’m angry that the entire time I was falling in love with you, you were figuring out ways to kill me!”
My mouth drops open. “I didn’t…that’s not…”
“I’m angry that when you had the chance to tell me the truth, you lied instead!” He has closed the distance between us faster than I can move backward so we’re standing almost chest to chest. “And I’m angry because now that we have a second chance, you still won’t be honest with me!”
“Were you planning to say any of this?” I ask, heat flooding my cheeks.
Bishop lifts his dark eyebrows. “I would have, if you ever stayed in one spot long enough for us to have an actual conversation.”
The fear is rising in me, the same desperation I’ve felt every time he’s near me since we found each other again. I start to turn away from him, and he grabs the bucket, holds it tight in his hand so I can’t leave.
“Let go,” I say through clenched teeth, my suddenly sweaty fingers slipping against the bucket handle. And the moment might be funny if I weren’t on the verge of tears, if I weren’t petrified of where this will end.
“No,” he says, voice hard. “Neither one of us is leaving until we figure this out…one way or the other.”
I tilt my head up to his, take in the tension in his jaw, the determined crease of his brow. Bishop’s capacity for patience, at least where I’m concerned, has always seemed almost infinite. All those days and nights we spent together in Westfall when he never forced me to give more than I was ready to offer, never demanded emotions from me that I wasn’t yet able to admit feeling. But along with his patience, there is also an underlying firmness, a wall that marks a point at which he will no longer bend. I witnessed it firsthand when he shoved Dylan off the roof. Have the evidence right in front of me now—the very fact that he came beyond the fence to find me.
Once Bishop has reached the limit of his patience, he is done holding back. And I think that tonight, on this dark riverbank, I have pushed him as far as he’s willing to go. I know he would never put his hands on me in violence. But he’s not above forcing me to confront what I’ve been running from, face the distance I’ve created between us. And maybe that’s what I’ve been waiting for all along, for Bishop to corner me into admitting things my mind tells me are better left unexamined.
“I know you’re scared, Ivy,” he says. “But if we don’t talk about this, it’s going to ruin us.”
