“That show was outstanding,” he said brightly, pointing at Dave, who was busy licking an Aquilinian’s dessert plate clean on a nearby table. “That goat bit was…” When he turned back to face me, all the brightness in him dimmed. “Sunny, are you all right? You look?—”
“I’m fine,” I snapped more than I’d meant to. But why was he asking me if I was all right? After what I’d done to him in the hallway, why did he want to talk to me at all? “I’m heading up to chat with Tig.”
Giving me a thin, polite smile, he said, “And I’m off to congratulate the wizards.”
Who was this man? How was anyone so unflappable? He should’ve been upset with me. Angry, bitter, anything. But he wasn’t. He was entirely, perfectly, infuriatingly fine. And it was such utter bullshit!
When he turned away, my arm shot out before my brain could hold it back, my fingers grasping his forearm.
“Sunny?” He frowned down at my hand. “Did you need some?—”
“Why did you ask me if I was all right?” I blurted out, ignoring the electric spark where my fingers wrapped around his tensing muscles. “After what I did, what I said to you, why do you care? Why aren’t you pissed at me? Why don’t you hate me? I mean”—I scoffed, fairly hysterical—“areyouall right?”
Faster than I ever had before—possibly a worlds record—I slammed my mouth shut. Because in the next blink, whatever wall of detached civility he’d built around himself came crashing down. His expression transformed, hardened, his eyes shadowed, as he slid his arm out of my grip.
Pulling my hand back, I held it against my chest, curled it over my pounding heart. I waited for him to say something, anything. But he only stared at me, his jaw clenched, his chest rising and falling with every silent breath. Until, with a dark growl, he bit out, “Am. I. All. Right?”
While the lights came up and softer, atmospheric Delphinian synthwave replaced the booming bass of the magic show techno, he took a single step back, shoved his hands into his pockets, and let me have it.
“Let’s see, Sunny. Let’s see if I’m ‘all right.’ Hours ago, I tried to kiss the woman I am out of my mind about in a public hallway because I thought she was trying to tell mesomething she wasn’t. I stood there, begging her to give me a chance,again, even though I knew better. Even though I knew”—his eyes closed long enough that it couldn’t be called a blink—“Iknewshe didn’t want me.”
When I opened my mouth—planning to tell him…what? That he was wrong? That I did want him? A hundred other things I shouldn’t say because whether they were true or not, they wouldn’t be fair?—he said, “And now I have to stand by and pretend that everything is normal, just perfectlyfine,while knowing she’s about to spend the night with another man. A man shedoeswant. And to top off my shittiest day in recent memory, I can’t even get drunk over it because I’m on the clock.”
Forfeiting any distance he’d put between us, he stepped close enough that the flecks of blue in his gray eyes shone under the lights, his voice barely raised over a whisper. “I know I have no claim on this woman whatsoever, and she is free to be with whoever she chooses. But the fact that she isn’t choosing to be with me tonight might actually be killing me. So to answer your question, Sunastara, no. No, I am very muchnotall right.”
His words were an assault. Quick, darting jabs aimed at my chest. And I decided—clasping my hands behind my back to suppress the temptation to slap him, or possibly grab his face and disappear into his mouth—that his anger was wildly unfair. Only a moment ago, I’d been sinking into an endless pit of despair. But now I was abruptly, intensely, refreshingly enraged. “Now you listen here, Fredrick. I never once said?—”
With a raised hand and an exasperated “pffft,” he shut me down, turned around, and walked away.
The nerve.
“Hey! Stop!” I ran after him, grasping his forearm asecond time, again ignoring the spark, the muscles. “You don’t get to justpffftand walk away.”
Wheeling around with fire in his eyes, he ground out, “Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” he insisted. And when I opened my mouth to disagree again—because I’d be damned if he got the last word—his shoulders fell, all the fight leaving his body in a ragged breath. “Christ, Sunny. What do you want from me?”
In the silence that followed that question, I only stared at him. WhatdidI want from him? I didn’t know. He confused me, confounded me, made the ground beneath my feet slant sideways. I couldn’t stand it.
“You asked me to back off,” he eventually said. “So that’s what I’m doing. But you don’t get to dictatehowI do it. You don’t get to tell me you don’t want to be with me, or to even try to be with me, then expect me to react exactly how you want me to. It’s not fair.”
As if gravity had instantly quadrupled, my mouth hinged open, my jaw dropping. “I didn’t… I haven’t…” I sputtered out, my anger ebbing a fraction. Was he right? Was I being unfair?
“You want your space,” he said, his voice strained. “And I really am trying to give it to you.” His features softened as he reached for me, sliding the loose strap of my dress back up my shoulder. “I’m just doing a terrible job of it.”
This time when he turned away, I let him go, watching on in a dazed, bewildered—and somehow also blisteringly aroused—silence as he paused on his way backstage to lean down and scratch Dave the goat between his horns.
Crossing my arms over my chest in an attempt to hold back the emotions warring beneath my ribs—anger, desire, confusion, annoyance,did I say desire?—I stomped acrossthe ballroom like a petulant teenager. It was possible, I realized, that Freddie had a point. Maybe I was being unfair. I knew I wasn’t perfect; you couldn’t toss a rock on this ship without hitting one of my insecurities. And I’d accepted the blame for wearing that dress. I should have been more careful. But I had been crystal clear with him since his first day on this ship. It wasn’t my fault he was upset with my choice to keep our relationship professional.
He was mad now, but his anger wouldn’t last. Eventually, I had no doubt, he’d realize the atomic bomb he’d avoided by not being with me, and he’d be grateful.
Taking a deep but not very cleansing breath, yanking my dress strap up again because the fucking thing refused to stay put, I forged ahead through the crowd. I still had an Argosian love match to make, and nothing—not wizards or fire dragons or confoundingly gorgeous coworkers—was going to get in my way.
12
Garran kneltin front of Dave, feeding him happles—a Ulaperian fruit that tasted like New Earth apples but were shaped like smiling mouths, hence the name—from the hors d’oeuvres table and whispering to him in Argosian that he was a “very fine goat.”
