“If we’re not drinking,” he said, “what are we doing?”
She handed him a shot glass. “Toasting.”
His brow raised.
She held her glass high. “To the end.”
“The end of what?”
“Of waiting.”
Then she dumped the shot of liquor out the window. She slammed the empty glass down on the windowsill and grinned up at Toran. The horror on his face tasted better than the liquor would have. His expression melted away to something contemplative.
He held his shot glass between them. “I promise you, Nes, I’ll get your father out of prison. No matter how this ends. Because you’ve been waiting, too. Probably far longer than I have.” He raised his shot glass a little higher. “To the end of waiting.”
Her gut turned solid as her heart melted into it. How easily he’d seen her. How easily she’d forgotten he could.
“To the end of waiting,” she echoed.
Toran’s smile was small and intimate, but the power of it ran through her. He held the shot over the dumpstreet, and she watched as amber liquor and clear glass were tossed out the window.
She burst into laughter before the shot glass hit the ground.
“What?” Toran asked.
She tried to catch her breath only for the laughter to escape her nosein a snort. She buried her face in his arm, but the laughter bubbled out of her.
“What?”
She waved a hand out the window, then at her empty shot glass on the sill. “You weren’t”—air trickled down her throat and into her heaving lungs—“supposed to throw the glass, too.”
He blinked at her. Laughter of his own bloomed. And then the two of them were cackling like seagulls at a fish market.
She leaned against him as their laughter died down to quiet chuckles. Minutes passed, and his warmth seeped into her. She tried to focus on the sounds of the Ditch, but like a drop of dye in a pail of water, he consumed her.
“What are you thinking about?”
She squirmed. “Nothing.”
“Didn’t look like nothing,” he said. “You looked like you were one second away from sighing.”
“In exasperation or pleasure?”
His lips quirked. “Pleasure.”
“Like this?” She let out a long sigh, peppering in a soft moan. It rose into the night, filling the air like a howl that left all loneliness behind.
Toran choked on a cough and cleared his throat. “Exactly.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you’re stronger than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at you. You’re all flustered.”
“Am not.” He tilted his head down toward her, chasing away the cold.
“Are too. I bet if we lit a lantern in here I’d see just how red your cheeks are.”
