I look at her. She looks back, waiting.
“Because watching you carry everything alone is—” I stop and look away. “Forget it.”
She huffs a short breath and shakes her head. “Why are you so against letting me handle things on my own?”
The question sits between us. She doesn’t answer immediately, and I don’t push. I’ve learned that with Miranda, the more you push, the harder she locks down.
“I don’t know how,” she says finally. “To accept help. I never learned it.” She turns the beer bottle in her hands. “And I’m afraid. If I rely on someone, they become necessary. And everything I’ve needed has been taken from me.” She pauses. “So I don’t need things.”
I look at her profile, the way she’s looking down at her beer, that hint of sadness in her gaze, and my chest feels heavy.
“So you just carry everything alone.”
“It’s simpler.” She doesn’t look at me, and I wish she would.
I don’t want to feel like this. I prefer it when we’re arguing and at each other’s throats. This vulnerability is confusing me.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I mutter. “There’s something I left on the counter.”
She nods, already looking back at the garden.
I leave my beer on the ground and head in. I splash some water on my face and grip the edge of the sink.
I need her for Ethan. That’s what I keep telling myself.
I look over my shoulder toward the kitchen door. That sad expression on her face is still sitting behind my eyes, and I can’t shake it.
Why can’t I shake it?
Sighing, I turn and head back outside. Miranda is still sitting where I left her. But I notice immediately that something iswrong. She’s got the wrong bottle in her hand, tilted back, draining the last of it.
I stop.
That was mine.
The beer bottle I’d gotten for myself was a pack brew. Nothing that would register for a shifter. For a human, it hits faster than anything on a commercial shelf. I leap over to her and reach out to snatch it away, but to my horror, it’s already empty.
“Oh shit.”
She looks at the bottle, a smile on her face, and then up at me. “My beer was empty, and yours looked good.”
“They’re the same beer,” I lie, sitting down across from her, feeling helpless.
“Yours was colder.” She shrugs. “Don’t be stingy.”
I look at her face. Her eyes are still clear, but there’s a softness around them that wasn’t there a minute ago. I put the empty bottle out of reach anyway.
“You are so wasted,” I mutter as I watch her tilt her head back, a small, goofy smile on her lips. “This stuff is instant intoxication for your kind.”
“I want this yard.” She turns in her chair to face me and tucks one leg beneath her. Her hair has mostly come loose. “I want to live in this yard.”
“You could.” The words come out before I’ve finished deciding to say them.
She grins. “No, I can’t. I can barely live in my apartment.”
“Tell me something,” I say before I can stop myself. “The doctor.”
She makes a face. “Still on that?”
