He looked down at me for a moment, and I became extremely aware of how close he was, how tall he was, how his eyes looked startlingly blue against the snow in the morning light.
“I will take that into consideration,” he said.
Great. Now his voice had gone warmer. Softer. More rumbly.
Fantastic.
Barcode trotted past us with the confidence of someone who knew she was not the topic of conversation anymore.
“So,” Carson said, glancing toward the zebra, “is this part of your job? Animal rodeos?”
“She’s not a rodeo,” I muttered, crossing my arms. “She’s a menace.”
“She seems friendly,” Carson said.
“She’s faking it. She’s two escape attempts away from starting a zebra crime syndicate.”
Carson’s mouth twitched. “I will be sure to stay on her good side.”
I threw my hands up. “No one should be on her good side. It only encourages her.”
He stepped closer, eyes drifting from Barcode back to me. “How have you gotten along without my help for the last two days?”
My stomach did a full somersault.
I opened my mouth to respond, panicked at how that question sounded, like he had been thinking about me, like he had been noticing I was gone, and instead of saying something normal or coherent, I said, “I survived. Barely. But I did not die, which is impressive considering the emotional wilderness I was lost in.”
Carson blinked. “The emotional wilderness.”
“Yes.” I nodded rapidly. “It’s treacherous, very rugged, and lots of… cliffs.”
“Cliffs.”
“Symbolic cliffs.”
“I see.”
“I mean—no! Not likecliff-cliffs. Not like the cliffs you think about. Or the cliffs I mentioned in the cave conversation, we definitely will not revisit.”
His eyes warmed with amusement. “All right.”
He wasn’t making fun of me.
He wasn’t teasing.
He was just… looking at me, like I was interesting and as if I was someone worth listening to, while I babbled about metaphorical cliffs and escaped zebras.
And that made everything inside me much worse.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway. You’ve been busy. With Beck. And Violet. And literally all members of my family except me. Because I have things to do. Important things.”
“Oh?”
“Very important,” I said. “Top-tier responsibilities.”
“Such as chasing a zebra around in the spring snow.”
“It’s not chasing,” I said defensively. “It’s guiding.”
