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His mouth twitched but didn’t turn up to a grin. Lucky. No matter how hot those dimples were, revealing them at that juncture wouldn’t have been smart.
“No,” he said evenly.
I nodded.
“So, you’ve come to tell me that Anna Wintour has her jet waiting at the town airstrip and will leave without me if I don’t drop everything to converse with you before taking off and becoming junior editor at Vogue?”
Another twitch. A glimmer of a dimple. It was gone before it could be fatal.
“Not sure I know who she is, but no,” he said.
I opened my mouth.
He held up his hand. “I’m gonna stop you because I’m getting your point, Snow.”
I glared at him. “You’re getting how colossally stupid it was to come rolling up to my house, unannounced, after our… incident, then waltz up to me and snatch my phone from my hands as if I couldn’t have anything more important in my life than giving you, the almighty one, my undivided attention?” I hissed, the coolness from before replaced with white-hot fury.
His eyes searched my face, and he stepped forward.
I stepped back so my booty collided with my fence. “I wouldn’t advise touching me right now if you’d like your wrist to remain attached to your hand,” I told him evenly, reining in my emotions.
He stopped, jaw hard. “I do like ‘the almighty one,’ just for future reference. But yes, I did believe us required your undivided attention, and I didn’t want to give you any fuckin’ chance to run away. I needed you still.” His last words were a murmur. The sound of a shared moment, a reminder of it. A dirty trick to play on the girl who only played at cool and calm, especially with him around.
I swallowed it, the reminder of the moment. The moment itself was rattling in the junk cupboard of my mind where I shoved all unwanted feelings. The place that was starting to bulge at the hinges.
“There is no us,” I hissed. “I thought I made that clear. And then you made it even clearer three weeks ago. After a year. Those actions made it crystal.”
Keltan thought for a beat and then disregarded my warning, stepping forward. I had no escape thanks to the stupid fence that had first drawn me to my little house, but I now wanted to burn down. He backed me against it, his body pressing against mine, and his hands framing my jaw.
“You know what you made clear?” he murmured, eyes on mine. “That you’re scared. That you’ll run from this until I find a way to make you still. And that you’re worth it. Me runnin’ after you. This is me runnin’, babe. Me chasin’.” His eyes traced my lips. “And this is me catching.” He paused. His eyes went faraway and hard like they had three weeks back. “And that day, after watching bullets fly around the air in the one place I was already fighting a battle unlike one I’d ever seen? That was me running too. I’m man enough to admit that now.”
The battle behind his eyes gave me pause more than words themselves. I saw it. Clearly. The battle that explained a little and a lot.
“Well, you seem to have found a way to entertain yourself while you were waiting,” Rosie said dryly. The interruption was a welcome one, considering the clarity that had me reeling. Though Rosie misjudged Keltan on my doorstep, her bright pink lips stretched to a grin, and her arms folded across her chest.
Rosie’s grin widened. “So, I’m guessing you’re not coming to the party?” Her eyes ran along Keltan like he was a sugar-filled dessert and she was coming off a no-sugar diet. “Or are you taking a rather large and delightful man as your accessory? Good choice. Much better than a Fendi, and he goes with your outfit much more than any bag ever could. He’s very on trend.”
I shifted my scowl to Rosie. “I’m coming.”
Though I said this at the same time as Keltan uttered, “She’s not coming.”
I shifted it back.
Keltan’s dimples deepened. “You’re gonna make yourself dizzy, darting the death glares around like that. Find someone to focus it on,” he suggested helpfully.
I ramped up my death glare to the one I only reserved for people who pushed in line at Sephora.
It didn’t have its intended effect.
“Good girl,” he murmured, like I was some dog performing a new trick. “That’ll make it so much more interesting.”
He looked to Rosie. “You okay goin’ stag to the party?”
She cocked her hip. “Sure. You okay going in without any weapons to this war, soldier?” she teased.
Keltan’s eyes flickered to mine once more. “Oh, I think her bark is much worse than her bite,” he murmured. “Plus, I don’t mind if I lose this one. ’Cause even if I lose, I win.”
