It felt as if she was purposely misinterpreting every word I said, twisting everything until I couldn’t find a safe sentence to stand on. I inhaled slowly. “You know I don’t think you’re stupid. But youareimpulsive. You act without thinking of the consequences.”
Laurel grabbed the water skin from my bedside table and splashed the water over my head. “Oh look, there’s me being impulsive. I just can’t control myself.”
For a second, cold water dripped down my face and onto the front of my shirt, and all I could do was stare at her. Then I wiped it away slowly, forcing my hands to remain calm. “Was that really necessary?”
Laurel backed toward the door again. “Ooh, look, here is me being impulsive, walking to the door. Maybe I’ll get caught and blow the entire mission. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Laurel,” I hissed. “Stop it. Just calm down and think, would you?”
She crossed the room in a few swift strides and poked me hard in the chest. “That’s the problem with you, Baron. You’re always thinking and never doing. You analyze everything to death, and it’s really annoying.”
“Anything would annoy you right now. You have a temper,” I said.
The moment the words left my mouth, I knew they were a mistake.
Her cheeks flushed angrily. “Oh, but you don’t? How about that little temper tantrum you threw when we first came up with this whole undercover idea? Then it was you acting like a two-year-old and yelling at everyone.”
I was determined not to take the bait and I wasn’t going to apologize for caring whether she lived. “I had to show everyone how serious of a situation they were getting themselves into. None of you were thinking ahead. Someone could get hurt or die, and no one seemed to care.”
“No one cared about what? Your personal safety?” Her mouth twisted. “Poor baby. You were worried your own comfort mattered more than the future of the country?”
“I joined your little band, didn’t I?” I shot back. The anger slipped free before I could stop it. “Didn’t I agree to run around in the woods wearing tights for the rest of my life, only for you all to send me away right after? It’s like you don’t even want me around.”
Laurel stared at me for a long time.
I refused to break eye contact. I was not going to be someone’s punching bag. Not even hers. Not when I was already standing in the wreckage of every shameful thing I had ever done, trying to prove I was not that man anymore.
“Why do you even want to join?” she finally asked.
The question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“Are you joining us because you actually believe in what we are doing, or because you thought I wouldn’t want to be with you if you didn’t join?”
I hesitated.
The truth was ugly, or at least it had been at the beginning. I never would have left my father’s camp if Laurel hadn’t asked me to come with her. I certainly would never have sought out Robin Hood and asked to follow in his footsteps. And if I had refused to consider joining the Merry Men, Laurel would have left me. I’d known that from the start.
But that wasn’t the whole truth anymore.
I had lived among them. I had seen what they fought for. I had sat by their fires, listened to their arguments, and watchedthem hand food to people who had nothing. I had met men who genuinely believed loyalty was something chosen rather than forced. I believed in their cause now. I wanted to stay. I wanted to be worthy of staying.
But the words tangled together in my throat. I didn’t know how to explain something that had begun selfishly and later become real.
“That’s irrelevant,” I said. “I’m here now, and I’m working on the same mission you are. I thought we were a team.”
The fury slowly faded from Laurel’s eyes, but what replaced it was worse. It was sorrow, and a terrible kind of certainty.
“I thought we were too,” she said quietly. “But I was wrong. We’re too different. This isn’t going to work out between us.”
It suddenly felt like there was no air in my lungs. There was no air in the entire room. I was falling, falling into nothingness. She couldn’t mean…
I stared at her, certain I had misunderstood. She couldn’t mean it.
“Wait,” I said, and the word came out too rough. I took one step toward her, then stopped when she stiffened. “Wait. Let’s sit down and think about this.”
“No.” Laurel’s anger flared again, but now I could hear the hurt beneath it. “I’m done thinking about it. I thought we could figure this out, us being together, but we clearly can’t. Didn’t you want me to think ahead? Well, congratulations, now I am. Are you happy?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
