He glances up, but his eyes donotgo straight to my face. They stall, just for a beat, on the fact that I’m standing here in nothing but a towel, dripping water on the floor. “What?”
“You thought it’d be funny to dig through my things now?”
He blinks too fast, clearly short-circuiting, like his brain can’t decide whether to defend himself or keep pretending he hasn’t noticed how close the towel is to slipping. “What?” he asks again.
“How naive do you think I am?”
He slowly sets his phone down, gaze flicking once—just once—back to the edge of my towel before he answers. His voice is rougher than usual when he says, “That is a trap question and I refuse to answer.”
“Messing with my stuff? That’s the best you’ve got?”
“I literally haven’t moved from this bed.” He pauses before adding, “If I’d come in the bathroom while you were naked in the shower, Ipromiseyou’d have known.”
I stalk to the middle of the room, towel cinched tight, pointing furiously. “You went through my bag while I was out. Or you trained a raccoon to do it for you, because it was a pretty damn messy job.”
“That,” he says, “would be kind of impressive.”
“Mads.”
“I swear,” he says, actually looking serious for once. “I didn’t touch your bag. Look, I might be a lot of things, but I’m not some bloody creep. If there’s one thing you can count on while we’re stuck in this hellhole together, it’s that I’ll treat you with respect.”
We stare at each other. The room feels too still.
I don’t believe him.
I also don’tnotbelieve him.
Then the corner of his mouth lifts—lazy, knowing, just shy of infuriating—as he adds, “Until you ask me not to.”
I roll my eyes, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a response, until something else catches my attention.
Then I glance toward the beds.
My bed is now sagging in the middle. The legs are crooked, the frame bent like it went twelve rounds with a heavyweight. The mattress dips so badly it looks ready to swallow itself whole. “What the hell happened to my bed?”
I stare at the wreckage, my brain trying to line things up. My bagwasmessed with. But if he tore into that, there’s no way he also had time to dothiswhile I was in the shower. Which means maybe the bag wasn’t him. Maybe. But the bed? Yeah, the bed might as well have come with a signed confession. This kind of sabotage has Mads written in bold, underlined, triple exclamation points.
Mads, currently lounging on his pristine bedding, is already back to scrolling on his phone. “Huh?”
“That”—I point accusingly—“was not broken when I left.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
“Am I—yes, I’m sure! I’ve known that bed for two hours. We had a connection. It was not broken before I left, and now it’s wrecked.”
I want to strangle him.
“So dramatic,” he mutters, but he’s smiling.
I cross my arms. “Stop calling me dramatic. You broke it.”
“Why would I break your bed?”
“Because you want me to share yours.” I realize how ridiculous that sounds, but I am frazzled.
He doesn’t even pretend to deny it. “Oh, Idefinitelywant to sleep with you,” he says, stretching like a smug jungle cat. “But I didn’t break your bed.”
There’s a full five seconds of tense silence while my brain blue-screens. Then I point at him again, less sure of my life choices. “Okay, well, that’s not happening.”
