“Okay, if that’s really what you want.”
“It’s not about what I want. It’s just the way it’s gotta be.”
“And can it also be that you at least let me thank you for saving my life?”
“No, it absolutely cannot. I don’t want gratitude for not letting a girl burn to death in her own car. Or for letting myself be railroaded into driving her home, instead of taking her to the hospital like I should be doing. Like any decent human being would. Instead of, you know. Whatever I am.”
He gestured at himself in a way so clearly contemptuous that she almost did wade in this time. The wordswhatever you are is undoubtedly better than anyone thinksshoved against her lips, and came close to breaking free. She wrestled with them, unsure if praise would do more harm than good. But that just meant he caught her struggle, and her confusion, and cut in before she could.
“Oh man. I’m scaring you again,” he said with a despairing groan.
Like the thought of her being fearful of him really did trouble his mind.
It troubled him so much that she had to correct that, at least.
“No. No, you’re not. That was all fine to say.”
He shook his head. Smacked the steering wheel with one hand, likedamn it, I screwed up again. “Yeah, but I did it in a really terrifying way, didn’t I.”
“Well, to be fair, anything that comes out of a man as tall and square-jawed and hairy as you is probably going to be at least eighty percent naturally more terrifying than the same thing coming out of anyone else,” she said, intending it as a joke. Something lighthearted.
He didn’t laugh, however.
He just looked at her with open interest.
Stroked his face, consideringly. “So what you’re saying is I should shave.”
“What?No, of course not. Not at all.”
“It’s okay, you can tell me things like that now.”
“But I don’t want to. I just want to be nice to you,” she said, so frustrated now that it came out fiercer than she intended. And she meant it, too. It didn’t even feel like something she was doing to head off his irritation at her soppiness.
He wasn’t even irritated at all, really.
Or, at least, not in the same way he had always seemed before now.
“Youarenice to me, kid,” he said, in that same furiously baffled tone he’d had for the last fifteen minutes. As if he couldn’t believe she thought she was cruel, any more than he had been able to accept her being at fault. As if he’d never thought those things about her, and just hadn’t known how to get that across. Words he’d had no opportunity or courage to say. But now he did. “You’re nice even though I’m a total ass to you over nothing. Overyou just living your life and being a normal human woman and even trying to help me out. Because I know you were just trying to help me out, bringing that book over. And that’s fine. I’m fine with you knowing that I wanted advice on how to be a normal, decent man, worthy of a good woman. In fact, it’s probably good for me that you do. Maybe this way I’ll look less like a jackwagon who doesn’t know there’s something seriously wrong with him.”
At which point, she realized two things:
That he had probably never really hated her at all.
And that all this had to be absolutely excruciating for him to admit. She wasn’t even sure how he was managing it, if she was being honest. It looked as if it was making him sweat; every muscle in his face seemed tense. But he got it out anyway—as if something had shoved him into it. Something big and scary, like thinking you terrified a woman into crashing her car, maybe.
Though that seemed like a step too far. Too much caring on his part.
It was probably something less about her than that—like simple desperation and disgust with himself, of the sort she could actually do something about. “Well, even if there are wrong things, one of them isn’t your facial hair,” she said, and the words did seem to settle him a little. He tried on the idea for size, like someone squirming around inside a new jacket that wasn’t supposed to fit.
Then, finally, he cleared his throat. He let out a tentative question.
“So you don’t actually think it makes me seem scary.”
“A little. But not in a bad way.”
“What kind of way, then?”
A hot one, she thought without meaning to.
