“I didn’t say that.”
“I can feel you thinking it.’
“And how exactly do my thoughts feel?”
“Like a huge furnace on the side of my face.”
She paused, then. Partly because she had to catch her breath.
But mostly becausehewas the one who’d just pushed it out of her.
Had he really just admitted something was affecting him?
He couldn’t have, her mind tried to tell her.
But she knew her mind was lying.
And she answered accordingly. “Maybe I should look away then.”
“No. I don’t need you to do that.”
“But you’d like me to.”
“If you could, just for a second.”
In truth, she was glad to turn her gaze to the passenger window.
The glass radiated cold—and there was nothing out there to really see.
No impossibly gorgeous man, no furnace blasting them both to death.
Just darkness. Just soothing, simple darkness.
It was all going to be fine, she told herself.
But her voice still wavered when she asked, “Is that better?”
And his reply was twice as tight as any of his previous ones.
“I really wish it was.”
“But somehow, it isn’t.”
“God, no. If anything, it seems worse.”
“Maybe it would help if we put some music on.”
“No, don’t, don’t do th—”
She clicked the stereo on before his protest fully sunk in.
Then really wished she’d slowed down.
The music was even more revealing than the books. It sounded like the soundtrack to some lost eighties movie about doomed love—so full of haunting notes and synthesised sighs that it almost made her do something very weird. Her heart was suddenly thumping. Her eyes were stinging. In fact, the only reason she didn’t give in was because he dragged her back down to earth. He turned the music back down before she could completely lose it.
And spoke in a nearly convincingly casual tone.
“I just like the band.”
