I stand. The flannel slips off my shoulder, and his hand catches my wrist before I’ve taken a step.
“You’re leaving just like that?”
I look down at him. “What else is there?”
“You don’t have more questions?”
“What do you want me to ask?”
He studies me a moment too long. “Questions about us, specifically.”
My stomach drops, and I go very still, careful with my face. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He pulls me into his lap, and I make a small, undignified sound on the way down. His arm wraps around my back, anchoring me, his other hand settling on my thigh as I shift to keep weight off my stitches.
“Fine, then I’ll start.” His voice has gone quiet. “What happened that night?”
“Which night do you mean?”
“The one neither of us has been talking about.”
My face goes hot. “If you’re implying that I—”
“I’m not implying anything.”
“Because I would never—”
“Miranda, listen.” His thumb is moving in a slow circle against my thigh through the denim. “I just want to know if I did something I shouldn’t have.”
I open my mouth and close it. He’s worried, the set of his brow giving him away, the line of his jaw, sitting here wondering whether he hurt me, whether he pushed me into something. My irritation collapses on itself.
“No, that’s not what happened. You didn’t force me.”
The relief that moves through him is visible, his shoulders dropping a quarter inch. He raises one brow, his voice gone teasing. “So you seduced me.”
“I did not seduce you.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“You were drunk and miserable, and I was trying to look after you.” I poke his chest with one finger. “Apparently you go from sad to handsy faster than I thought a person could.”
He kisses the tip of my nose. “It’s only around you,” he murmurs.
I shove at his shoulder and stand up because one more minute on his lap would push me into something I can’t take back. “I’m done.”
I make it three steps toward the sliding door before his voice follows me out. “Humans and shifters can be together, you know.”
I freeze in the doorway, my hand on the frame, my back to him. He isn’t supposed to be able to read my mind, isn’t supposed to have caught what I was thinking five minutes ago when I sat there pretending I wasn’t grieving something I never had. I look over my shoulder.
He’s leaning back in the chair with his ankle crossed over his knee, a half-smile on his stupid face, watching me with the patience of a man in no hurry whatsoever. I flip him off, and his laugh follows me into the house, audible through the glass as I climb the stairs, my face burning, my pulse loud in my ears, the stitches in my arm pulling with every step.
The morning brings a newspaper.
Sterling sets it on the breakfast table at eight-thirty with the careful expression of a man delivering ordnance. He’s in his usual gray suit, briefcase tucked against the leg of his chair, and he hasn’t even sat down before he pushes the front page toward me across the kitchen island.
I look at it. Then I look again because my brain refuses to take in what it’s seeing the first time. The photograph takes up half the front page: Grayson with his arm hooked around my ribs, my toes off the ground, my hands in his hair. The angle catches the ring on my left hand where it’s pressed against theback of his neck. My mouth is open against his, and his eyes are closed.
Heat floods my entire face.
