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“Can I hold that gun for a sec?” Her voice was teasing.
“No,” he said.
She folded her arms over her belly and slouched against the wall. “Are you afraid I’ll sexually assault you, or something?”
“Connor asked me to guard this house until he got back,” he said tersely. “I’m goddamn well going to do it. So don’t bug me.”
Cindy slid down the wall until she sat on the floor, hugging her knees tightly to her chest. “Are you ever going to stop hating me, Miles?”
He let out a long, careful breath, trying to choose amongst the hundred thousand completely contradictory replies he could give to that statement. “I don’t hate you, Cin. I just hate the way you made me feel. I hated being your personal slave while all your dickhead boyfriends treated you like shit. I really, really hated that.”
“I’m not with any dickhead boyfriend right now,” she protested.
He shrugged. “It’s just a matter of time. I’ve got better things to do than run errands for you while you track your next dickhead down.”
She covered her face with her hands. “Nobody forced you to do all that stuff for me.” Her voice was small. “You could have just said no.”
“That’s true. That’s what I finally did, Cin. I just said no.”
She sniffled. “You hate my guts because of this morning, right?”
Oh, yeah. Right. He almost exploded in hysterical laughter. “No, Cin. I told you. I don’t hate you. I wish you well. All the best. Really.”
She chewed on that. “Wish me well,” she repeated. “I wish Great-Aunt Martha well. I wish all the poor children in the world well. I wish the humpbacked whales and the bald eagles and the panda bears well.”
He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing against whales or eagles or pandas, or Great-Aunt Martha. And I’ve got nothing against you.”
She covered her face with her hands. He was appalled to hear soggy sniffling sounds again. He clenched his teeth. “What do you want to hear? That I love you? I’m not going to say that. I had a crush on you, but I’m over it. I’m not letting you wipe your feet on me anymore.”
“I wouldn’t,” she whispered. “Ever again.”
“Wouldn’t what?” His voice hardened.
“Wipe my feet on you.” She brushed tears out of her eyes, sniffing hard. “I’m sorry if I ever did. I never meant to.”
The soft invitation in her trembling voice tore him to pieces. He wanted it so badly. His fantasy of Cindy, just how he wanted her to be. Grown up, chilled out, feet on the ground. And wanting him.
Fantasy, though. The key word here was fantasy.
He stood there, throat frozen with fear and pain, until the question in the silence between them became a flat, implacable answer.
Cindy let out a shaky sigh and got gracefully to her feet, padding through the kitchen. She stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Miles?”
He braced himself. “Yeah?”
“I wish you well, too,” she said. “I really, really do.”
She had a tone in her voice he had never heard before. She wasn’t trying to sock in a zinger, or impress him, or shock him. She wasn’t trying to jerk the world around until it was the way she wanted it.
Her voice was sad and flat. Facing reality. Dealing with it.
It almost made him change his mind. Having Cindy be real and straight with him was all he had ever wanted from the universe.
But she’d already vanished up the stairs. The fleeting moment was lost. He’d probably imagined it anyway, knowing how fucked in the head he’d always been about that girl.
Miles stared out at the lightening dawn. His heart felt heavy, a dead weight in his chest just like the gun in his hand, and a cruel, searing tightness in his throat, like someone was pulling a knot tight.
God help the fool who tried to assault that house on his watch. He would blow the fucker full of holes without a shred of remorse.
