“Better to be dead, you mean? Did you not see the coroner hauling away a bloody body?” he said, sounding nearly hysterical. And for a moment my heart clenched, because it struck me that the bloody murder scene we’d witnessed may not have looked all that different from the scene young Huck had been a part of when his parents died in that streetcar accident. I worried it stirred up traumatic memories for him—just for moment. Then his jaw turned steely, and I realized I was probably just being overly sensitive, because clearly he was fine.
That’s what I got for caring.
I made a shooing gesture. “Go on, then, leave. I really don’t care. Enjoy the Orient Express while I’m off doing what needs to be done. But know this, Huxley Gallagher,” I said, pointing at his chest. “I’ll never forgive you for deserting me again. Not as long as I live. So if you walk out now, I never want to see your damned eyes in front of my face!”
He swatted my finger away, scowling down at me. “Do you think that little of me? Do you?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. I thought I knew, but I’ve been lied to so many times, I just...” Unable to finish, I fought back a sudden swell of tears, angry at Huck. At my father. And at myself for caring about either one of them.
“Look at me, banshee,” Huck said, bending down until his face was in front of mine. “You aren’t the only person worried about Fox, you know. He may not be my father, but he did help raise me. If I were the one who’d disappeared, he’d come looking for me. So shut the hell up about it. I’m not deserting you in the middle of Romania. I’m supposed to be keeping you safe.”
“Only because Richard Damn Fox told you to,” I said. “Clearly you care more about him than you ever did about me—which I was too blind to see at the time. Thank the gods he caught us together, because it saved me from more heartbreak.”
Something like fire caught behind his eyes. “C’mere to me,” he said as he reached forward with both hands and firmly held my face. He spoke in a low, tense voice, nose almost touching mine. “You don’t think I’ve suffered?”
“Not like I did.”
“Is that right?”
“You left me!” I cried, angry and hurt and feeling as if he’d stripped away my armor.
“And it nearly killed me!”
“Good!” I shouted. “Because itdidkill me.”
His fingers trembled around my face. “Losing you shattered me into a thousand pieces. Ever since, I’ve walked around with this misery inside me, trying my damnedest to keep this tiny spark of hope alive that Fox would let me come back—that your heart hadn’t grown cold. That you hadn’t moved on to someone else and forgotten me. That all of it wasn’t for naught, because if it was? Christ, banshee. I didn’t know what I’d do. So there. Are you happy now? Are you happy to know that I wanted to die without you? Are you?”
Seismic waves vibrated inside me and shook silent tears from my eyes. They streamed down my cheeks before I could stop them or fully come to grips with what he’d said. I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t moved on to someone else, that I couldn’t, maybe not ever. That this battered, broken heart of mine wanted him still, even now.
But the words were trapped in my throat.
“Ah, hell and fire,” he mumbled as his thumbs swept over my cheeks, wiping tears away as his own eyes became wet and glossy. “Please don’t cry, banshee. You know I can’t handle it when you cry. ThenIwant to cry, and it ruins my tough-guy reputation, and none of us want that, do we?”
“Maybe,” I choked out, laughing a little, because if I laughed, then I wouldn’t cry, and if I didn’t cry, then I could regain some semblance of control over my wild emotions and attempt to figure out what all of this meant.
“I shouldn’t have said any of that,” Huck said in a softer voice, fingertips brushing hair away from my face. “It’s not fair. Not right now when there are other things to work out. Sarkany and that damned dog. Your father...” He paused and said, “And maybe none of it matters. I don’t even know if he’ll let me come home yet.”
“Of course he will,” I said.
“He hasn’t decided. And that could mean that when this is all over, I go back to Belfast. I don’t even know when I’d see you again. If.”
If? That was impossible. Father wouldn’t do that.
Would he?
“He told me...,” Huck started, hesitating. “Fox said if he ever allowed me back home, it would be strictly as a member of the family. Not as his ‘daughter’s paramour.’?”
“Oh,” I said, both insulted and embarrassed. “I see.”
I gently pushed Huck’s hands away and wiped beneath my eyes with the side of my hand. He stepped into the bathroom and returned with a wad of toilet paper. I thanked him with a nod, blew my nose, and tried to gather my thoughts. Tried desperately to summon my armor back and stop shaking like a frightened Chihuahua caught in the rain.
“Banshee?”
I looked up at him. His face was a collection of sharp lines and deep hollows, and I couldn’t decide if he was trying to tell me something or ask me a question.
“Never mind,” he mumbled, shaking his head, and the mask slipped back on. Nothing was wrong at all. Nothing to see here. A quick tilt of his mouth that didn’t quite make a smile. “Let’s draw a line under this conversation for now,” he suggested. “At least until we figure out what to do about Fox, yeah?”
Was that what I wanted? To leave this gaping emotional wound open and undressed when it likely needed stitches? Everything felt raw and confusing between us again, and that wasn’t what I’d imagined it would feel like. Because Ihadimagined it, a thousand times in a thousand different ways—Huck telling me that what I felt for him wasn’t one-sided or temporary. I fantasized about him showing up at Foxwood after piloting a plane over the Atlantic, telling me that he couldn’t bear to stay away any longer. Or finding out that he’d gotten conked on the head and had amnesia this entire time, and that he’d woken up in a hospital whispering my name.
