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“God, Roman, no. I wouldn’t do that. Listen, the thing about Flossie is, we all kind of forget that she’s an alligator, because she’s—”
He wasn’t listening. He’d blanked his face, turned his back, and as she spoke, he slid open the door and disappeared inside the dining hall.
“Damn it,” Ashley said.
“He really doesn’t like alligators,” Don said helplessly.
“No one likes alligators, Don,” Ashley said. “They kill people.”
“Not Flossie, though.”
“No. Not Flossie.”
Roman didn’t know Flossie—hadn’t grown up visiting the commune, seeing the animal gain length and weight but never fearing her because she was Flossie, the eight-inch-long baby who’d been stranded on the lawn after a bad storm, and who’d taken to the commune residents as much as they took to her.
Roman saw her for what she was. Hundreds of pounds of teeth and muscle, born to stalk and kill.
“Bet he has nightmares about gators for a year,” Mitzi said at her elbow.
“Would you blame him?”
Mitzi gripped Ashley’s biceps and gave her arm a shake. “Don’t start feeling sorry for him.”
She didn’t feel sorry for Roman. Empathy was not the same as pity. She felt like an asshole.
“I need to talk to him.”
“And tell him what?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”
“Don’t mess this up, Ash. This is your chance. He’s already shaky—now you go for the jugular.”
Ashley pulled her arm out of Mitzi’s grip, seeing her intensity, her near-frenzy, in a way she never had before.
The word Grandma always used about Mitzi was single-minded. She had a certainty, a strength of purpose, which Ashley fiercely
admired because she didn’t possess it herself.
But Mitzi could be blind about things, too. She’d been blind about Kirk for ten years—scorning his devotion and sleeping around, always looking for the right guy when she already had him.
She could be rude, too, in her self-centeredness. That sex marathon last night—that had been rude. And taking Ashley out in the swamp while Roman was in the shower … not a move Grandma would have approved of.
Grandma would have made sure Roman’s car had been towed by now. She’d have located a cutting torch and fed him and found him a fresh toothbrush, and if Ashley had argued with her, she would have said that hospitality was non-negotiable.
But Grandma wasn’t here.
“I’ll do my best,” Ashley said.
She leaned down, scooped up Roman’s phone, and set out after him.
She found him in his car. Sitting in the driver’s seat, hands in his lap, face completely empty.
Ashley opened the passenger door and levered herself up. The car was insanely hot—a hundred degrees or more. She began to sweat instantly, but she pulled the door shut anyway. “Roman?”
“What?”
Completely toneless. He was really upset.
