“Aw, that’s fine. I shouldn’t have pried, but you know I love gossip.” Luna paused. “Are you alright? You sound…different.”
Emma bit her tongue, fighting the urge to tell Luna to mind her business. Never mind that she’d called her. Never mind that she would have to slog down the mountain in a ratty pair of sneakers and not enough layers. Then Arthur’s voice came to her once again:You have to open up, not just hide under the anger.
Goddamnit, Emma thought. I might actually have to thank the bastard.
“Actually, I’m not doing so great,” she admitted in a rush. “Can you pick me up?”
CHAPTERTWELVE
Emma was gone.
No goodbye. Not even a wave. Just a conspicuously empty cabin and a text message he found when he was considering calling the cops to report a kidnapping.
Got a ride home, the text message said.
Arthur had stood there in the living room for a long time, staring at the screen and trying to convince himself there wasn’t a pit opening in his chest. Even with that last-minute argument, he thought they were getting along. He had been more vulnerable with her in the past week and a half than he had been with anybody in the lastdecade. Not to mention the knotting, which had made him feel like a fumbling teenager all over again. Or, more accurately, it made him feel something he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager. Stripped bare, nothing to hide. Just Arthur.
She didn’t message him again. Not when he asked if she wanted to get coffee the next day or dinner the day after that. Not until he asked if she’d seen the articles that had just come out, full of hazy half-truths about their teenage relationship and damning photos of them mid-kiss, her fingers tangled in his mane.
I really did try to get them to pull those stories, he messaged her.I know you like your privacy.
This, finally, was what made her break her silence. He opened the message expecting anger, annoyance, or at least wary exasperation.
Her reply had none of that. It was one sentence, short and bland enough to make him wish she had called him up to yell at him.
Thanks for trying.
* * *
Jennifer ambushed him several days later as a makeup artist rearranged his mane.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, tugging a blanket tighter around her and shivering. “Give me a soundstage and potato flakes any day. I’m freezing my toes off.”
“You get used to it,” he assured her. He sent her a reassuring smile, staying as still as possible for the makeup artist tugging at his mane. They were standing in the middle of Main Street, filming the confession scene.
Jennifer stood next to him, watching Rusty tell off the camera crew. Somebody had dropped an important piece of sound equipment, and they were running out of time. They only had a few hours before the sun started going down.
“I thought you’d gotten warm blood in LA,” Jennifer said. “The cold definitely seems to be affecting you now.”
“Is it?”
She laughed. “You’ve flubbed more lines today than you have in this whole shoot! You can admit your mane isn’tthatthick. I know some chimeras back home, and they can’t even cope with frost.”
Arthur forced a laugh. He’d botched more than a few lines because he was too busy watching the street they were shooting on, hoping Emma would walk by. They’d closed it off, but there were still people gathered around the barriers, taking photos or asking for autographs in between takes. Arthur had been over to them a few times before Rusty made him stop.
“You ferreted me out,” Arthur said. “I can’t deal with Alaskan winters anymore.”
Jennifer beamed. “I knew it.”
The makeup artist gave his mane one last painful comb and then raced off. Jennifer swayed sideways, her blanketed elbow brushing his.
“Sooo,” she said. “Talked to Rusty lately?”
Arthur gave her a blank look. They had all been talking to Rusty. He was the director, and they’d talked to him five minutes ago.
“Alone,” she explained.
“Not today,” he said. “Why? Am I getting fired?”
