“Wow, Rudy, I didn’t know you were such a softie.” She giggled.
I swore under my breath, adjusting my pants. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a softie.”
Those tears must have short-circuited my brain. I’d already shared more information about myself than I had planned, and now, stupid words were spilling out.
“What made you feel like this today?” My tone came out soft, and I frowned at the tenderness. “Not that you need a reason.”
“I don’t?”
“I don’t think so. Life’s already hard enough.”
And you don’t need to be making it harder, I scolded myself. I’d never confessed what my planned revenge had been.
“You’re lucky I’m such a forgiving person,” I said then. “You wouldnothave survived the embarrassment I had in store. Trust me.”
She snorted.
I puffed out my chest. “Was that a smile I heard?”
Fuck, I want to make her smile.
“You can’t hear smiles.”
I took a sip of my sports drink and swished it around in my mouth. “I can. It’s one of my many talents.”
“Oh, along with humility?”
Damn, I loved that smart mouth. This girl never took any shit from me.And it’s kind of fun to be put in my place.
“Hey, I’m not arrogant—I’mhonest. And direct. Huge difference.”
YVAINE
A beat passed.
I almost heard my heart drop to the wooden floor, as hard as his question.
“It’s my”—sniff—“little brother.” I sniffed again. “He has cancer.”
The words came, faltering but so raw. I talked about Ian, about the fear that took permanent residency in my chest, the helplessness I tried to bury every day because I owed it to him to live fully. It poured out of me like water bursting through a well-built dam.
And he just listened.
Then distracted me, subtly, skillfully, from something I had zero control over.
“You never told me what you do for a living, apart from being an active nun in the Comet church,” he said at some point. There was genuine curiosity beneath the usual abruptness.
“What’s wrong with being a nun? Their life is drama-free, and they get to meditate.”
“They just masturbate the frustration away, you mean?”
“I’m ignoring that.”
He laughed.
I grinned, running my finger along the wood dent in the floor from the time ten-year-old Lachlan fell and bumped his head, then stopped at the corner of Ian’s door. “No, I’m studying to become a neurologist. What about you?”
“So, wait, you’re an actual doctor?”
