“That.” I gesture at him. “That ridiculous martyr thing you do where you decide what’s best for everyone and then act like I should be grateful for it.”
“I’m not acting like that.”
“You are, Rory.”
I take another step toward him. The firelight flickers across his face, across the tension in his mouth, the muscle ticking once in his jaw.
“You don’t get to kiss me like you’ve been starving and then turn around and tell me that’s it and it’s for my own good.”
He says nothing. Which is infuriating. Because silence from Rory has always had this way of feeling louder than actual words. So I keep going.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” I ask. “It’s not even that you pulled away. It’s that for one stupid minute I actually thought maybe I’d imagined you wrong all these years. Maybe you’d finally stop deciding things for me. Maybe we’d actually just…” I exhale sharply. “I don’t know. See what happened.”
His expression changes then. But I’m too angry now to stop.
“Instead you spent all day acting like I’d thrown myself at you in the camp kitchen and now you have to nobly recover my dignity.”
“I did not act like that.”
“No?” I tilt my head. “Then what exactly was today, because from where I was standing it looked a lot like panic wrapped in good intentions.”
His eyes flash. “Fine,” he says, voice lower now. “Yes. I panicked.”
The admission lands between us with a force I don’t think either of us expected. For a second neither of us moves. Then he drags a hand through his hair and lets out a breath that sounds almost angry at himself.
“Happy?”
“No,” I say honestly. “Not remotely.”
The fire pops sharply behind us.
“I panicked,” he repeats, quieter now, rougher. “Because I kissed you and then I spent the whole night thinking about it and all morning wanting to do it again and none of that changes the fact that this could ruin everything and that I can’t have you. Not really.”
My heart stutters. But the anger is still there, hot and alive. “Then let it be my decision too.”
He looks at me. Really looks at me this time. “And if you regret it?” he asks.
I stare back at him. “Stop telling me what I might regret.”
The room has gone so quiet I can hear the shifting of the logs in the grate. He takes a step toward me then, finally closing some of the space, and the whole atmosphere in the room changes with it, the air between us pulling tight, humming with something that feels electric.
“I’m trying,” he says, and his voice is low now, frayed at the edges in a way I have never heard from him before, “not to be the kind of man who makes your life harder.”
“And I am trying,” I say, just as quietly, “not to scream every time you decide what I should feel before I’ve had a chance to feel it.”
He takes a deep breath. The firelight flickers across the room, painting everything gold and shadowed. Neither of us moves.But neither of us walks away either. And suddenly it feels like something is about to break.
Chapter forty-two
Rory
The problem with Freya when she’s angry is that she doesn’t stop talking. Which normally is not a problem. Normally it’s part of the charm. Freya has always had this way of talking when she’s wound up, sentences spilling out one after the other like if she stops for too long, she might lose her nerve and say something softer instead. Tonight, though it’s… a lot. Because every word she says is true.
“And another thing,” she’s saying now, pacing two steps away from me and then back again like she’s arguing a case in court instead of standing in the middle of a dimly lit common room at nearly midnight, “you don’t get to kiss me like that and then spend an entire day pretending I’m invisible like that somehow fixes it.”
The fire pops behind us. I say nothing. Mostly because every time I open my mouth I’m ninety percent certain I’m about to say something that will make this worse. Freya notices the silence.
“See?” she says, throwing her hands slightly into the air. “That. That thing you do where you just shut down like if you don’t talk long enough the situation will magically resolve itself.”
