"Do you really think that's my first time with a man invading my personal space? Flirty men sit too close. It's, like, their whole thing." My voice is rising and I can't stop it.
"Not if I can help it."
"No. Stop that shit right there. You don't get to do this. You don't get to saywe're not togetherin front of Barb and ruin the whole mood and break my—" I bite it off.Break my heart?Hell no.I am not going to say that. "—and then come storming in like Drake committed a felony by telling me I'm pretty."
"He told youwhat?"snarls Afon.
But I'm not here to indulge his immature jealous streak. If he wants to claim me, then fuckingclaim me,dammit. None of this hot-and-cold bullshit.
"Why did you… Why did you have to—" My breath fogs the air between us, ragged. "Why did you say it like it disgusted you?"
He stands. Turns. And in the dark, with the snow lashing sideways through the spruce, I can't read his face at all.
"It didn't disgust me," he intones.
"Then explain yourself. Because I'm done coming up with explanations for you."
His jaw grinds. His hand goes, just like it always does, to the bronze band on his left ring finger, twisting it once around. For as long as that ring is rotating, I let myself believe that he's going to give mesomething.
A real thing.
A true thing.
The kind of thing that makes the cold worth it.
"Get under the tarp," is what he says instead. "You're shivering."
The disappointment is so total and so familiar that it almost makes me laugh.
"Of course," I say. "Of course. Not here. Not now. Never now."
I drop down onto the blanket he's spread, because my ankle has had enough and because I am too cold and too defeated to keep standing on principle. "You know what, Afon? Fine. We're not together. How could we be? You live in a fucking fantasy world! You camp in a snowbank and assume Barb is a hitman. You snarl at Drake and won't tell me why. You lock away your secret phone and your secret order and your secreteverything,and you stand there twisting that ring like it's going to unlock the secrets of the universe." I pull the blanket up to my chin. "I cared about helping you get out of all that stuff before. But not anymore. I'm done asking. I won't keep torturing myself with wondering why you hate me. I'll just take it as a fact that you do, and I'll move on."
He stands over me for a long moment. The snow lands on his shoulders and doesn't melt anymore; he's gone that cold. Wolf circles once and drops against my side, a warm wall, the only one in this whole frozen world who has never once made me guess.
"You're wrong about one thing," Afon says at last.
I laugh bitterly. "Only one?"
"I don't hate you." He crouches down, finally, at the edge of the blanket, close enough that I can see the exhaustion carved into his face, the gray under his eyes, the blood he won't admit is still seeping at his hip. "I hate that I know too much about the world, because what I know is this: Whatever you love can be taken from you. Maybe it's Reznik that takes you, or maybe it's just a man in a stupid canvas coat. But when he leaned in toward you… when you laughed…" He leaves the sentence unfinished and goes to start the fire instead, striking a match against the box, cupping the flame from the wind with hands that have killed people and bandaged my ankle and held me on the floor while I cried. "I didn't like it. That's all I've got for you tonight. I didn'tlike it, and I'm not going to be a good enough man to pretend I did."
It is not an apology.
But it's something.
It's a crack in the wall. A half-inch ofmaybe.
I almost take it. I really do consider wrapping myself in this scrap of emotional comfort he's tossed me and call it warmth.
Then I think to myself,No.
Fuck no. I am so tired of subsisting on his scraps. Of being grateful for half-inches.
I didn't like itis not even close to the groveling apology I deserve for this one step forward, two steps back act he keeps pulling again and again.
"That's it?" I spit in disgust. "That's what I get? 'I didn't like it.'"
His face twitches. "Caroline?—"
