Page 47

“I want you to explain something.”

He exhaled through his nose. “What?”

“You told me not to touch you.”

Everything in him changed. Not much.

Declan never did anything much. But I knew him.

I knew the tiny pause in his breathing. The new tension along his jaw. His hand settling more firmly around the wheel.

I kept going. “I touched your shoulder. Barely. You flinched away from me and told me not to touch you.”

“Hazel.”

“No.” My voice sharpened. “You don’t get to make me feel disgusting for putting my hand on you and then act like this.”

“I never said you were disgusting.”

“You didn’t have to.”

His face tightened. “That is not what happened.”

“That is exactly what happened.”

“No.”

“Then what happened?”

He said nothing.

Of course.

I laughed bitterly and looked out the passenger window.

Dark pasture rolled by. My reflection floated over it in the glass.

I hated how close I was to crying. I was too angry to cry. I wanted to stay that way.

“Megan kissed you,” I said. Silence. “She put her hands on you. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t tell her not to touch you.”

His voice came out rougher. “Leave Megan out of this.”

“Why?”

“Because she has nothing to do with it.”

I turned back toward him. “She has everything to do with it.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“You told me not to touch you, Declan.”

“I know what I said.”

“And then twenty minutes later she touched you and you let her.”

He swallowed.