“Is that bad?” I asked.
Did I even believe this? I could see that every idea had to come from a grain of truth, but I didn’t think my future was written in the lines on my hands. Was it?
“It’s making me want to wrap you in that blanket and make you a hot chocolate,” Dante said. “It’s broken all the way along. You’ve had your heart broken a lot. Probably why you don’t date.”
“How do you know I don’t date?” I asked. How the hell did he know that?
Dante looked at me for a long moment. “Iggy told me,” he said eventually. “But you thought I could read your mind for a second there.”
“Did not,” I said automatically.
Dante snorted. “You and Iggy are so alike,” he said.
“He was my best friend.”
“Was?” Dante raised an eyebrow.
“Is,” I corrected. “Is my best friend. Still.”
Maybe that was pathetic, but there’d never been anyone else like Iggy in my life.
Dante hummed. “Got a break in your fate line,” he said. “That’s a career change.”
“Sounds unlikely,” I said. I didn’t know anything but the job I did now—what else would I even do?
My Benedict Arnold of a brain whisperedbakingat me, but I wasn’t about to give it the satisfaction of acknowledging that thought. Childhood fantasies didn’t play well in real life.
“I’m just reading the signs,” Dante said. “You’re a mess, Harvey.”
I snorted. “Thanks.”
“But you’re a shockingly well-adjusted mess, considering,” Dante added. “And it’s a soft mess. You’re a big pile of unfolded laundry waiting for someone patient to come along and tuck you away into all the right drawers.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a talent for weird metaphors?”
“Frequently,” Dante said. “Jesus, you don’t evenhavea sun line.”
“Isthatbad?”
“It means you work too hard,” Dante said.
I smiled wryly. That was probably true. “But you already know that.”
“You don’t have a sun line whether or not I know it,” Dante said. “Look it up for yourself if it’s so hard to believe.”
“What’s this really about, Dante?” I asked. He wasn’t making grand sweeping predictions or trying to entertain me, so he must have wanted something.
“It’s about you not hurting Iggy,” he said.
Right, of course it was. Dante had been protective of Iggy from the get-go.
I couldn’t fault him. I was protective of Iggy, too. Iggy was the kind of person that inspired protectiveness in the people who…
Loved him.
“I won’t,” I said. “I couldn’t.”
“You could, if you were careless,” Dante looked me in the eyes, holding my gaze so I couldn’t look away. “If you hurt Iggy—”
