Page 106 of Twisting Beauty

“Then why didn’t you answer?”

“I was busy.” I unzipped my jacket pocket and fished out my lip balm.

“Doing what?”

“Being somewhere you weren’t.” I swiped it on, capped it, then pocketed it.

He stepped into my path again. “You’re avoiding me.”

“So observant.” I went around him again, hands shoved in my pockets, pace unchanged.

“Why?” he asked, his voice exasperated as if the answer genuinely eluded him.

Dear Lord, help me to accept the things I cannot change, and to not go to jail for his murder.

“I needed a day off,” I bit out.

“From what?”

From everything. From faking Rua. From being responsible for the fate of all those girls. From him.

I didn’t answer.

The top of the staircase opened ahead, the foyer spread below, dark marble and chandelier light and the watchful eyes of old portraits, all of it too grand for the pettiness of this fight and too exposed for how personal it already felt.

I pressed my sports watch into runner mode with my thumb, the small beep bouncing off the high ceiling. Then I put one hand on the polished banister and started down the stairs.

He followed.

“From what, Liath?” His voice had dropped to a growl, no longer annoyed in the shallow way of a boy denied attention, but strained.

I shot him a look. “Really?” My laugh came out thin and sharp. “You’re just gonna play like last night didn’t happen?”

He blinked. “You’re upset about last night.”

I rolled my eyes. “Genius.”

I sped up my steps, practically jogging now, his footfalls heavier as he kept up with me.

“Okay. I… I might have handled it… badly.” The words sounded dragged out of him, like they hurt him to say.

It just made me angrier. I grit my teeth and tried to ignore him.

But he kept going, “Maybe I shouldn’t have⁠—”

“Lorcan.”

“What?”

“Don’t apologize for something you don’t mean.”

“I’m not apologizing.”

I halted in my tracks and looked at him properly for the first time.

Something in his face had gone tight and almost younger, as if he were a little boy lost.

“Then what are you doing?”