I tilted my head in challenge. “With that hand?”
His eyes dipped toward my mouth, and the look came so quickly I could have pretended I missed it if my body hadn’t reacted like a traitor, heat spreading beneath my skin. He noticed that too. His face stayed cold, but his gaze sharpened, honing in on the reaction.
“Careful, Clarke.”
I smiled, all teeth. “You keep saying that like you don’t want me to ignore it.”
His good hand shot out and caught the doorframe beside my head, not touching me, not trapping me enough to make it something I could accuse him of, but close enough that every nerve in my body went bright and electric.
“You think you know what I want?”
“I think you moved across town and still can’t get me gone.”
“I do fine without you.”
“Because only calling me Clarke—a clear boundary—makes it easier?”
“Because Aura is the woman who destroyed me for loving her.”
I shoved one finger hard into his chest. “And Easton is the man who turned hurt into a hobby and made every interaction feel like a public execution.”
He caught my wrist with his good hand, his fingers wrapping around it, warm and unyielding.
I looked down at his grip, then back at his face. “You going to let me in or bleed on your own floor out of principle?”
His grip tightened for half a second, one pulse of pressure, before he released me and stepped back, his movements stiff. “Touch whatever you want, right? You’re good at that.”
I walked past him into the apartment, my shoulder brushing his chest on the way in. “You’re trying so hard to be cruel it’s almost embarrassing.”
He shut the door hard enough to rattle the wall. “And you’re trying so hard to act unfazed that it’s getting pathetic.”
The apartment was small, cold, and aggressively bare. One couch, worn at the arms. One lamp with a crooked shade. A kitchen that looked clean only because there was almost nothing inside it: one mug in the sink, a half-empty bag of bread on the counter, and a stack of bills beneath a skate-sharpening receipt. A gray blanket was folded over the arm of the couch with the kind of military precision that made me want to mess it up just to prove something in there could still happen by accident.
I dropped my purse onto the counter with a thud and started digging through it. “Sit down.”
“No.”
“Bleed standing up, then.”
“I will.”
“You’re exhausting.”
“You can leave at any point.”
“You got into a fight, your knuckles are split, your mouth is bleeding, your face is bruised, and your ribs clearly hurt. I am trying to help you.”
“You keep saying that like I missed it.”
I pulled out antiseptic wipes, gauze, medical tape, and a tiny bottle of saline. Easton stared at the pile, his expression unreadable.
His mouth twisted. “You carry a whole clinic in there?”
“I’m a woman with enough sense to stock my purse before we left the bar.”
“You’re a woman with control issues.”
“Both can be true.”
