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Great. I was trapped in here with a neanderthal.
I couldn’t process silence or one-word replies. It was like sending a long text and receiving “K” in return. Only uncivilized people did that.
Silence settled into the tight space.
I considered organizing the storage for something to do, but it was already organized, so I hummed the tune to Jeopardy and looked around for something to help us get out of here.
Paper towels. Toilet paper. Printer paper. Receipt paper rolls. Paper napkins.
Lovely.
“Why a unicorn?” he asked.
I swiveled to face him, not sure I heard him right. “What?”
“You turned my chair into a unicorn. Why a unicorn?”
“Because your sister reminds me of them. She is one of a kind, beautiful, and resilient. She sees the magic in life.”
“The magic?”
“If you don’t believe in it, you’ll never find it.”
“You believe in magic?”
He looked amused, his face filled with a condescending mirth. His lips lifted in some semblance of a smile, and I swore everything seized.
He had dimples.
Two of them.
I wanted to reach my fingers up and poke them. I’d never do that, of course, so I shook my head in furious spurts.
“Not like wizards and witches,” I explained. “I mean it like Fate and Destiny. That type of thing.”
“You make the world seem prettier than it is.”
“Funny, considering I don’t see beauty when I look at it. But your sister does.”
“She’s young.”
“Maybe. But I’d like to keep those rose-colored glasses on her for as long as I can. She laughs out loud without hesitating, speaks what she feels in her heart, and only thinks with good intentions. People who have lost those things don’t realize their value until they’re gone. People like us. It’s up to us to protect those who haven’t lost them, because only we know.”
“We.”
“Yes.”
He could deny it if he wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact that I saw loss in his eyes. The kind of loss that always bled no matter how long ago the wound had closed.
It stuck there no matter how he felt, no matter what he was doing, no matter what he would do. I didn’t know who he’d lost—the files hadn’t told me—but I knew what I saw.
Bastian had a protective instinct. His jaw had ticked at the word rape, and he’d not only saved me but also reacted to the fact that I needed saving.
Like the idea that it could happen again unsettled him.
There could be no worse thing for me to realize about him. I’d always been drawn to people like that. Seeing protective instincts fractured a barrier I’d worked so hard to erect.
How desperate was I for affection that I preened at the first inclination of feeling from someone who’d been an obstacle since I’d met him?
