"It means there's no point in expecting anything." He pressed his thumbs to the back of my calf, rubbed his way to my ankle. "Expectations just fuck you up."
"Anything can fuck you up. Believe me, I could write a book on all the little things that can fuck you up."
"And you could probably distill that book down to a single word. Expectations. Either you expected more or you expected less, and whichever way it went, it fucked you up."
I watched him as he hiked my foot to his shoulder, the sun circling him in a halo of blazing heat that seemed to bounce off the black-clad mountain range of his shoulders and the dark cloud of his hair.
"I don't like that," I said.
He shrugged, dragged his lips to my ankle.
"You should expect things," I continued.
He stared down at me, his lips still fixed to my skin. "Why?"
"Because—" I slapped my hands to the mat. "You should."
He narrowed his eyes. "What would you have me expect?" I didn't have an answer for that. When my only response came in the form of some fast, frustrated blinking, he went on. "What would you like me to expect from you?"
He pressed his teeth to my ankle. His beard tickled enough to send a twitch down my leg. He tightened his hold and everything,everythinginside me pulsed with need.
"I don't know."
A ripple passed through his brows, something grumpy to hide his disappointment. Yet there was no hiding that he was disappointed. I'd said the wrong thing though the right thing was a mystery baked into this twisted mess of mutual resentment and hate sex.
Muscle memory instructed me to smooth this over, to ease the disappointment. "You're hugging my leg."
He ran his hand from my ankle to the hinge of my hip, squeezing the thick of my thigh on his way back down. "It's a nice leg."
"Nice?"
"Don't go fishing, Shap. It's not a good look." He scraped his beard along the flash of skin exposed between my leggings and sneakers. "Maybe this guy Erin has lined up for you won't mind such obvious requests for flattery but I do."
I pressed my heel to his chest. "Why do you have to do that?"
"What? I just assumed you were looking forward to meeting him tonight." His brows climbed again. "Erin Acevedo knows her shit. I bet this guy is a perfect match for you, god help him. By my estimation, he's partially to fully deaf to handle all your screeching, has a sky-high tolerance for ambiguity on account of all the natural disasters you create, a very solid sense of self to balance out you needing to be right all the fucking time, thick skin because you insult people without any regard for their feelings, and the palate of a very boring child."
I glared at him. I hadn't thought about that party all week, mostly as a means of keeping myself from obsessing over it. As was my tradition, the obsession was localized to how I'd navigate the food and beverage situation. I'd ignored all parts of this alleged fix-up. "Mmhmm. Sure. That checks out."
"Don't pretend you don't have it all gamed out."
I pushed against his chest. "Gamed out?"
"Yeah, I mean, I know you, Shap. You have a plan of attack lined up. You're going to show him your non-sociopathic, non-feral side. Pretend you don't rip off heads just to remind everyone you can. Before you know it, you'll have him lulled into some nice, hollow complacency. The story writes itself. You'll have matching gold bands and a pair of semi-sociopathic children. Then you can tear his guts right out of his belly and he won't even see it coming. Horror ever after. Just what you've always wanted."
I stomped my foot against his sternum and sent him sprawling backward. "You don't know me," I said, scrambling to my feet. "Whatever the fuck you think you know—you're wrong. You're really fucking wrong."
He rocked to his knees. "What just happened?"
I backed up, crossed my arms over my torso. His expression was flat, almost confused. That made no sense considering he'd obviously spent some time thinking about those comments. "Oh, I don't know. How about you telling me how I intend to trap some guy and how that's my grand plan or something? Where do you get off saying these things to me? Really, Stremmel, where the fuck did you get the right?"
"Tell me I'm wrong," he said, still on his knees. "Tell me you're not hunting for a husband and some kids you'll hand off to a nanny because you'd sooner die than cut your on-call hours."
I took another step and felt the ropes at my back. "I've given you more than enough. I'm finished."
I climbed over the ropes and walked away as Sebastian called, "Would you just calm the hell down? Get back here, Shap."
I was wrong. The torture wasn't worth it.
