“Where are you going?” he asked, beating me to the punch.
The question scraped across my nerves, too direct and too loaded, and my grip tightened around the doorframe until the wood pressed into my palm.
“Where areyougoing?” I retorted, throwing it back at him.
Neither of us answered.
The longer the resulting silence between us stretched, the more it seemed to thicken and electrify, snapping until I couldalmost hear it bouncing off the walls. Nate’s eyes were steady on mine, but he was flustered for sure.
Worn down, like he’d been pacing around a cage he couldn’t escape. I knew the feeling because I’d been doing the same thing inside my apartment for the last hour.
Pacing, sitting, standing, and then pacing some more. Finally, I’d talked myself into doing it. Just putting it out there, but as I stood here now, I was trying to remember why Ineededto leave. Why it mattered. I had somewhere important to be.
So why am I not moving? Why am I standing here, staring at the way the light is catching the golden strands of his hair? Why am I noticing how his jaw is flexing like he’s grinding his teeth, holding back words he doesn’t trust himself to say? Why, oh fucking why, with everything crashing down around us, am I still so painfully, stupidly attracted to him I can barely breathe?
It was crazy. This entire situation had been slowly killing me from the moment it’d started. The forced proximity. The constant friction. The way every argument between us felt like it burned hotter than it should, like we were fighting something neither of us wanted to name.
And now, it felt like the air between us had thinned to the point of suffocation. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I want to go back to hating each other,” I said suddenly.
The words tumbled out before I could stop them, my fingers curling harder around the doorframe. Something dark flickered across Nate’s expression before he took one slow step toward me.
My pulse spiked as his eyebrows arched slightly, his features morphing into a mask of skepticism and challenge. “I do too.”
“Because it’s too hard,” I said, my voice breathier with every word I said. “And we’re seeing other people.”
The muscle at the back of his jaw ticked. “Sure.”
The word was flat, but the tension behind it was audibly tight, like it might snap if I pushed any further. I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry, but we needed to clear this up. Now. Before it went any further. “We hate each other.”
He took another step closer, not close enough to touch me or even to invade my personal space, but enough that I felt the shift in the air. Almost like gravity had tilted and dragged him half an inch nearer without his permission.
“We do hate each other,” he echoed.
For some reason, it sounded wrong coming from him like that, his voice rougher and lower than his usual register. My heart slammed against my ribs so violently, it almost hurt, but I nodded.
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. We fight constantly. We can’t agree on anything. You think I’m?—”
“Impossible,” he cut in.
“You think you’re always right.”
“Only because I usually am.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” I snapped, heat flaring through me even as I tried to fight it, but with those eyes still locked on mine, I already knew I was fighting a losing battle.
His gaze was still stormy, but it almost looked like our argument was causing a wind within that was blowing away the storm and something else entirely was rolling in.
“You’re loud,” he said. “Maybe if you’d just listen sometimes, you’d realize that I’m usually right because I actually think before I speak.”
“Fuck, you really are insufferable.”
“And you’re stubborn.” His eyes darkened, something dangerous and electric sparking behind them. “You’re just arguing to argue right now, Kate.”
I scoffed. “You provoke me on purpose.”
“Maybe because you rise to it every single time.”
