The words felt wrong the second they left her mouth.
“That’s the problem,” Tilly shot back. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
The words landed like a punch.
Savannah swallowed. “Why would you think I want anything?”
Tilly blinked at her. Slow. Disbelieving. Hurt. “You’re really going to ask me that?”
A hot, tight knot formed in her chest. “Yes. I am.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, the air between them growing hotter, narrower, heavier with every second.
Then Tilly spoke, voice low. “Because you keep looking at me like you expect something.”
Savannah felt her face flush.
Because they weren’t wrong.
“Or like you’re daring me to say something. And then the second I even breathe wrong, you shut down,” they finished.
Savannah felt her face flush. “That’s not— I don’t— you’re reading me wrong.”
Or maybe too right.
“Am I?”
The emphasis made her toes curl in her boots.
Outside, a horn honked somewhere far back in the line of cars — the sound swallowed by the storm. Inside, the cab felt claustrophobic, like the cold had nowhere to go and the heat had nowhere to rise.
Savannah pressed her thumbnail into her palm. “If I’ve been off, it’s because I’m overwhelmed. That’s all.”
“You said that already,” Tilly murmured. “But you never say why.”
Savannah turned her face toward the window, heart racing. “Maybe I don’t know why.”
Which wasn’t entirely true.
Tilly studied her profile. “I don’t believe that.”
Savannah whipped her head back toward them. “Then stop asking me questions you think you already have the answers to.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It feels like it.”
“Well,” Tilly said tightly, “it feels like you expect me to read your mind.”
Savannah’s breathing quickened. “I don’t.”
“You do.”
“I don’t!”
Their voices echoed too loudly in the small truck cab, and both of them froze at the sound of it.
Outside, the storm kept howling.
