Her face softens a little as she glances to Aiden. He’s always had an easy-going charm, and while I’ve envied that about him, I’ve never fully felt jealous. But it sits uncomfortably in my chest, a cloying sensation that makes me glare at him unprompted.
Aiden glances at me with a smile on his face that promptly melts off. He makes his sad baby brother face out of habit.
I shake myself and shrug it off.
He’s barely a few sentences in about renovations the bar has made when I get up from the table. They fall quiet and I don’t hear a thing from them as I leave to get outside.
It’s drizzly and gross outside, but I couldn’t be in there for another minute.
There are a few hand-rolled cigarettes with a few dried and crushed aconite petals blended with the tea. Usually, I use themto feel a little toasted, since normal substances aren’t really enough for our kind. But it’s also to keep the wolf at bay. Early on it was harder to control my wolf, and lighting one up was a quick way to calm it down.
It had felt too easy to consider, too reasonable in my mind to dive over the table and grab Aiden by the collar. And for what, because Elise had smiled at him?
That would have been disastrous. Maybe I do need to lock myself in the brewery cellars during the full moon.
The door bangs open a few inhales in, just as I’m starting to feel a little more in control. I don’t expect to see Elise coming after me.
She stops a few places away from me, wrinkling her nose. “Is that the hipster-tea-cigarette-shit you always liked?”
I shrug and kind of nod. Not the way I would have described it, but alright.
She looks ready to pick a fight with me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you know how bad this stuff is for you?”
“You got statistics on that? I love statistics.”
She rolls her eyes, regretting the momentary lapse of judgment that made her offer concern. “Never mind, feel free to kill yourself.”
She paces away, reaching for the door to go back inside. She stops just short of it and glares at me. “You don’t get to make this harder for me.”
“I’m not trying to make this harder for you.”
“Then what was any of that?”
“What were you doing, telling our intimate details to my cousin of all people?”
“Obviously, I didn’t know that at the time! I didn’t know any of that or I wouldn’t be here!”
I have to hold back the urge to grin. In some small way, fighting feels more comfortable than anything we’ve said to each other so far, all the awkward tiptoeing. This is the Elise I remember, ready to die on any hill.
I have always loved this Elise.
“Obviously, you wouldn’t be here, you would have left the minute you found out. You would have packed your bags and disappeared without a word.”
Her eyes flash with anger. “Don’t make it sound like I caved the moment it got difficult. You made it difficult for a long time.”
Fury claws up my back, at the nerve she strikes. “I wasn’t the one ready to give up on us. Not even after you left!”
“Even after I left? Did you still love me when you were sneaking out of our bed in the middle of the night? When you left me, time after time, thinking I wouldn’t know you were gone, or wonder where you were, who you were with? When I confronted you and you still couldn’t be bothered to tell me the truth?”
“I wasn’t—” I stop short, my jaw tense.
She looks at me, glaring daggers, frowning so viciously, like she can’t believe that I had ever loved her.
“Even then,” I swear, my voice tight.
Her hand clenches on the bar door handle. Her frown twitches downward like she’s trying not to cry. “Maybe to you, it looked like you loved me. But you were just hurting me.”
She lets go and stomps away, turning around the corner to the back of the building where the dumpster and stacked crates are.
