That snapped me out of it. “No.”
The look he gave me said he didn’t believe me. Not at all.
And there must have been something in the expression I gave him right back because he blinked.
“Don’t start,” he grunted.
I stared at him.
He pointed at me. “No.”
I kept staring at him.
Alex narrowed his eyes even more. “Think of something else.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Anything.”
Anything?
Pressing my lips together, I tried. I really did, but my thoughts only went to one place. The same place they always did—to the three hundred questions that lived on my tongue at any given point. So really, it was his fault for why I asked, “Did you want to do something else? When you were little?” I thought about it. “If you were ever little.” I really, really didn’t think he’d been grown in a test tube at this point, but you never knew.
“I grew the same as you,” he told me with… was that a smirk?
And why was he giving me so much information? Because now he knew I wouldn’t be able to get away from him? “I wanted to be a fighter pilot like inTop Gun,” I blurted out, like he cared.
He grunted. What might have been a minute later, he said, “The only thing I remember ever wanting to be was a firefighter.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah,” he answered, giving me only that.
I didn’t mean to say it. I really didn’t, but it still came out of my mouth, probably because I was stunned.“The more time we spend together, the more you talk to me, the more I realize you are… you’re so much more than the spandex you put on. It’s weird.”
“It’s not spandex.”
Yeah, but it wasn’t like he was going to tell me what it actually was, was he?
But of all the jobs in the world, he’d picked one that helped people.
Was it really just me he had beef with?HadI done something in another lifetime? Maybe I had a doppelgänger who broke his heart?
I was thinking about that as I opened and dumped the cans of chili I’d found into a clean, newish pot whenheasked, out of the blue, turning everything I thought about him upside down one more time, “What else do you want from your life?”
“Huh?” I asked, stirring the beans and meat.
He repeated his question word for word.
Was he really asking aboutme?“In the future?”
“No, right this second.”
I groaned a little. He hadn’t moved from his spot against the cabinets. The rest of him was still mud-splattered vogue. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his expression was a different one.
I already knew he was being ornery, but was he really just trying to mess with me?
Did he… want me to mess with him back?
