She shook her head in denial. “Not happening. No way in hell. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
His chin tilted at that, but he did not respond. Seconds ticked by while they stared at each other.
“So, what?” she croaked when her skin itched with the need to say something. “We just hang out until it passes, and then you’ll try to make me go, and I’ll fight you tooth and nail so you don’t?” His chin lifted, and she swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “If you force me to go, it doesn’t really follow along with the ‘no harm’ mentality, does it?”
He rolled his shoulders back. “I will not force you,” he said finally.
A snort left her nose, unbidden. “You won’t convince me to come with you.”
He didn’t react to her statement, didn’t tell her she was wrong, or become more confrontational. They stared at each other, motionless, while rain splattered against the outer decontamination zone door.
Second by second, some of her terror seeped from her body. The clenching of her fists relaxed, and her heart rate slowed.
Could she believe anything he told her?
Boom.A crack of thunder ripped through the building, rumbling the floor beneath her bare feet and making her heart leap into her throat. Every time she thought the strength of the storm might be lessening, it proved her wrong.
He looked upward, as though he could see the violent sky through the ceiling.
“It will be some time before the storm abates,” he said, his voice smoothing out more.
Her jaw flexed as she tried to decipher the statement. “Is that your way of saying there’s enough time to convince me?”
His eyes glinted as he refocused on her. “I do not understand your question.”
She huffed a breath. “No, of course not.” Everything he’d done or said so far was literal. She shook her head. “Never mind.”
Light flashed against the clouds, and another rumble of thunder rippled through the outpost.
He was stuck here like her. No matter who he was or what he was doing here, they couldn’t stare at each other for the duration of the storm. After a day in the fields yesterday, and spending most of the night in the greenhouse, the stiffness in her muscles told her she needed to stretch and move.
And thoughts of her greenhouse made her fidgety. All the work that was meant for two people now landed solely on her. She needed todosomething, not just stand here and worry about how he was going to “collect her.”
He’d said he wouldn’t harm her, and he hadn’t.
He’d also said she was Calypson, but that was impossible.
A slow exhale passed between her lips, and she pushed off the wall. He twitched. She froze.
When nothing else happened except more thunder and lightning, she stepped backward into the kitchen.
He stayed in place.
She kept her eyes on him as she took another step, then another. His chin angled downward, but he didn’t advance.
Wynn’s butt hit the kitchen island, and she gripped the counter with both hands by her hips to keep steady.
“How about this?” she said, hating that her voice still shook. “How about I agree not to leave the outpost and you agree not to touch me, or hurt me, or do anything to me at all?”
He tilted his head, then nodded once. “Agreed.”
“And,” she continued before he said the entire word. “You can’t lie to me.”
He straightened. “Agreed.”
“And,” she rushed ahead again, needing this in order to keep her sanity. “Once the storm has abated enough, you will leave, and there will be no more talk about collecting me.”
His quick agreement didn’t come, and her hands tightened on the counter, the edge biting into her skin.
