“Please let me talk.”
“Youleftme,” she bites out. The very tip of her nose reddens with anger, and I want to ask her how she could dare to do something so endearing while not allowing me to touch her. “You and I are doomed, Alex.”
Right people, wrong universe. That’s what she thinks about us.
It’s bullshit. I need it to be bullshit.
“Come on a drive with me.”
Her spine straightens, shoulders squaring. A determined look solidifies in her gaze, andthere’sthe woman I fell in love with. She’s so beautiful.
“I’d rather put myself into a blender.”
“I can put some rotating blades in the car, if that’d help.”
“Only if you put your head through them.”
“Oh, you know very well that I’d put my head wherever you ask me to, Ophelia,” I reply, much too quickly.
That has the pink tinge of her nose spreading over her freckled cheeks, and suddenly the low fog that hugs Sorrowsong castle doesn’t feel so cold. “I … that is not … I didn’t mean it like that.”
She’s flustered. The thrill it gives me is dizzying.
I take two cautious steps toward her. She doesn’t bolt, but she does look like she might snap my neck. At least her hands would be the last ones to touch me. “Just let me talk.”
“The time for talking has long passed, don’t you think?”
“No, not really.”
“You’re impossible.”
I chance another step toward her. “Determined.”
“Desperate.”
Another step, and she’s so close I could almost touch her. “Lovesick.”
She flinches at that one, and I’m finally close enough to her to see the hairline cracks in this steely facade she’s put up. She’s pale. The circles beneath her eyes are vicious, every shade of purple a knife to the heart. The hard shell of anger is chipping, and I can see the hurt beneath it.
I’ve been so wrapped up in work, in my sisters, in my mom, in my dad’s disappearance that I hadn’t really appreciated until now what I’ve done to her. Lured her in, spent months convincing her to open up to me, threw it all back in her face.
Jesus fucking Christ, I’m so sorry.
I can see it now, her rebuilding that wall I spent so long dismantling. But I can’t let that happen. And maybe she’s right, maybe I am desperate, suffocated by the black cloud that just won’t shrink, no matter what I do. I thought I was doing the right thing by staying away, but it might actually beworsethis way around.
The idea of losing her is one thing too many.
“I shouldn’t have left.”
Her laugh is cold and disbelieving. “And it’s taken you this many weeks to realize that?”
I tilt my head back and blow a long breath of smoke away from her, silently asking the universe for help. “That’s not true.”
She’s on a roll now, her tone utterly incredulous. “And the phone number thing?”
“I know, I’m sorry. I had to deactivate my old number. Some-one leaked it. I was going to text you. Itriedto text you, I just …”
“Didn’t.”
