Page 17

stop filing things, I wrote.

Priya: never

I read through the messages. Jess had barely said a word since we all climbed into the jeeps.

Jess? I wrote.

Jess: I’m here

Jess: carsick

Priya: you get carsick?

Jess: I do today

I set the phone down.

When the first signs of civilization appeared, Damian pulled over at a rusty gas station. He got out and filled the gas tank, then went inside to pay. I went to release my seatbelt, so I could grab some water and gum.

The damn thing was jammed. I wrestled with it, but it wouldn’t come loose.

Damian opened the passenger door. “It gets jammed,” he said. “Hold on.”

Then he reached across my body and worked it loose, and every nerve under my skin came alive. I watched his hands do it, and inconveniently, I thought about all the other things his hands could probably do. His forearm was an inch from touching me. When the belt clip finally clicked free, he hesitated, and before pulling back, his eyes found my mouth. He leaned in, a fraction more, as if closing the space to kiss me.

My mind went cleanly and immediately blank. It willed him forward to close that space, despite common sense telling me I should at least know his full name first.

Right then, Callie stirred from the backseat. She groaned, then sat up.

Damian pulled back, quickly, and returned to the driver’s side.

I climbed out of the jeep, needing air, and grabbed my purse. “Callie, you want anything?”

“Yeah, I need to pee.”

I let out a heavy breath as we walked inside. I browsed the aisles, too distracted to pick out a pack of gum.

“You okay, Marlowe?” Callie said, handing over her card for water.

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve been staring at that gum for five business days.”

As Damian eased back onto the road, the jeep felt smaller than it had a minute ago. My hands wouldn’t settle. I had them in my lap. Then on the door handle. I realized I was leaning a half inch toward the driver’s seat. I straightened. A minute later, I’d done it again. My body had agreed to something my mind hadn’t had a moment to think about, and that agreement felt binding.

But the terms were unclear. When Callie had drifted back to sleep again, I spoke up.

“I feel like you saved me from something and I don’t even know who you really are.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I know. And that might be for the best.”

His words made my stomach drop. I squeezed the water bottle. The pull between us was too strong for that lame answer. The mixed signals were infuriating. He looked even more disappointed with his response than I did.

And that disappointment was too familiar. I’d sat with that feeling too many times before. Tolerated it. The emotional withholding. The commitment phobia. The male allergy to vulnerability.

I thought about the night before. About creating that stupid sigil and throwing it into the fire. Most of it was still a blur, but I remembered, vaguely, the foolish feeling of hope I’d felt when I’d read my own words.

But that was all nonsense. It had to be. Last night had been a very expensive new-age performance with excellent marketing and a deeply sketchy undercurrent. Whatever Aurora had actually been doing by that fire, making the air behind us do that thing, it wasn’t going to magically bring the right man into my life. In no believable timeline could I have wished for love that was deep and true, and found it in a man sitting by that same fire at two in the—