"You're not seriously going to stand there while I?—"
"I'll wait outside."
He moves toward the door, but something makes me reach out and catch his arm. The contact sends a jolt through my system that I ruthlessly ignore.
"Rex."
He stops. Doesn't pull away, but doesn't look at me either.
"Are you okay?"
His jaw tightens and his shoulders go rigid.
"I'm fine."
"You don't seem fine."
"And you're suddenly an expert on how I seem?"
Normally this is where I'd snap back. Where we'd fall into our usual pattern of barbs and hostility. But something's different today. He's not as intense as usual. Not as sharp.
There's something almost...morosein the way he's holding himself. Like the fight's gone out of him and he doesn't know what to do without it.
This is the first time we've really talked since I came back from the hotel with Phoenix and Rafael. Since my heat.
Since… well.
Everything.
"I care," I say simply. "That's why I'm asking."
His eye finally meets mine. Cold blue and searching, looking for something I'm not sure he'll find.
"Why?"
"Because you're not as terrible as you want everyone to think." I echo Jamie's words from earlier, hoping they land the same way. "And because you've been avoiding me for days, and I want to know why."
Something flickers across his expression. There and gone, buried under layers of armor I'm starting to recognize.
For a moment, I consider telling him the truth.
You're my scent match.
That's why you've been acting weird around me. Why being near me feels like something you can't name. And it's why you gave me your room and beat Stephen into paste when you could have stopped at breaking a few bones.
That's why you keep making sure I'm safe even though you hate me.
But this is a coffee shop bathroom. A coffee shop bathroom with tacky lights and bad quotes painted on the walls, to be exact. Not exactly the setting for a revelation that would change everything between us.
Or destroy it.
So I don't.
"I'm fine," Rex repeats, and this time there's finality in it. The door opening, the conversation closing.
And so does theliteraldoor.
I stand there, staring at the space where he was. Then I go into a stall, do what I came here to do, and try not to think about theway he looked at me. Like he was drowning and I was the shore, but he'd convinced himself he deserved to go under.