“No.” Her smile turns wicked. “It’s me.”
Christ. She might actually kill me.
I take a step back before I do something stupid. “Did you need something else?”
She blinks. “What?”
“You brought cookies.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And… I guess that’s it.”
I cross my arms. “That’s it?”
She fidgets—rare for her. Softens. Looks anywhere except at me.
“I just thought,” she says lightly, “that maybe you guys would like them. That’s all.”
She clears her throat. “You know. Holiday goodwill. Community spirit. That sort of thing.”
Her voice is too bright. Like she’s hiding something. Like she’s nervous. And that thought hits me hard. Girls like Lucy Snow don’t get nervous. But she does around me. The idea does something dangerous inside my chest.
I lower my voice. “Why are you really here, Lucy?”
She swallows. Then she says, too quietly, “I thought you could use something nice after the week you’ve had.”
I freeze.
Everyone else keeps talking and laughing and eating cookies, but the world narrows to her and me and that soft, unbearably earnest sentence.
I try to joke it off. “I’m fine.”
She lifts one brow. “Uh-huh. You always say that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“It’s not,” she says gently.
I look away. “Drop it.”
“No.”
“Lucy.”
“Ash.”
We’re doing this again. This verbal tug-of-war that leaves me feeling exposed every damn time.
She steps closer. “You look tired.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re lying.”
I exhale sharply. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.”
