“He’s got your number, huh?” she asks, still laughing.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I grumble, and she heads into the bathroom to brush her teeth while I stay at the table, staring at the blank screen of the iPad and try to pick apart guilt and shame and desire and embarrassment, but I only succeed in knotting it all together.
CHAPTERTWENTY
ANDI
“Doyou turn into snakes at night?” I ask, arms folded, standing in the doorway to the bedroom. “Is that the problem?”
He pauses where he’s rearranging the wood in the wood stove, then turns to stare at me.
“What?” he finally asks.
“Or some kind of hideous monster?” I go on. “Like that Greek myth where the woman married a god but wasn’t allowed to look at him at night.”
We stare at each other, and with each passing millisecond I’m less certain I know what I’m talking about.
“You mean Cupid and Psyche?” he finally says, because of course Gideon knows this.
“Sure.”
“She wasn’t allowed to look at him because he wastoopretty.”
“Is that—”
“No.”
There’s a note in his voice that makes me stop what I was about to say and go silent instead. Gideon’s been a little extra gruff and a little extra awkward—above his usual baseline of gruff and awkward—since he got off the phone with Reid, and damned if I know why. I just know that usually when I badger him about sleeping in a separate bed in the same room, like a reasonable adult, he blushes and almost smiles and rolls his eyes and then packs me off to bed by myself.
But now he’s shoving wood around again and I’m standing in this doorway, wearing avocado-patterned pants and his sweater, wondering what happened and how I’m supposed to fix it. Is it because we kissed? Is it because I said it wasneatthat Reid transitioned, like the world’s biggest dork? Was I insufficiently obsequious to his cat? Are we both just cold and tired?
“We don’t even have heating pads here,” I finally say, and to my relief it comes out light and teasing.
Gideon sighs. “Nowwhat point are you trying to make?”
“That the couch is probably bad for your back,” I say, mentally thanking Reid for that bit of ammunition.
“It’s fine,” Gideon says, and swings the glass door to the wood stove shut. “And do you really think that mattress is so much better?”
Well, having slept on one, no.
“I want the record to show that I tried to offer you comfort, like, thirty times,” I tell him, and finally, that gets a faint smile as he brushes his hands together, turning toward me. The relief I feel is ridiculous. Maybe he’s not mad at me; maybe he doesn’t regret everything we did. I could ask but it’s easier to accept his smile and push past it.
The light in here is low: two oil lamps mounted on the stone fireplace itself, the electric lantern casting a white angle on the far wall, where our coats are hanging, and the dancing orange light from the wood stove. Gideon’s lovely in it, all his hard lines softer, his hair gently curling around his ears. I swear his eyelashes look a mile long right now.
“Thank you,” he says, and it’s a little stiff, a little formal. “Do you need more blankets?”
“I think I’m okay.”
“Night, Andi.”
“Night, Gideon,” I say, then go into the bedroom and get under approximately seventeen blankets.
* * *
Seventeen blankets isn’t enough.
I would never survive in the wild.
