"Was I in the way at the senator's apartment?" I asked. "I seem to remember helping you." I wasn't a helpless damsel, sobbing in the corner and begging to be rescued. I didn't want to be one now.
"You did," he said grudgingly.
"Why can't I help now?" I'd managed not to shoot myself in the foot. I hadn't shot anyone else in the foot either. That counted for something, right?
"We don't want anything to happen to you," Woody mumbled.
"What was that?" I asked, keeping my tone light. "Did you just admit you cared about me?"
He snorted. "Don't come at me with mental gymnastics. Forrest and Leif will be pissed off at me if I let you get hurt."
"Right,they'llbe pissed off," I said slowly. "You know what I think?"
"Nope." He grunted.
"I think you do care," I said. "I think you care more than you want to. Certainly more than you'll admit to. I think you'd be pissed off if I got hurt."
"Yeah, I would," he said, after a moment or two of silence. "I'd be the one cleaning your blood off the floor."
He glanced at me again, the faintest hint of a smile on the corners of his mouth. So faint I almost missed it.
"Sure, that's the only reason," I said sarcastically. I leaned forward and whispered in his ear. "You like me."
"You're a pain in the ass," he whispered back.
"You're an asshole," I told him.
"You're a princess." As if that was some kind of insult.
"You're the pea," I said.
He looked at me confused. "I'm the what now?"
"The pea," I said again. "You know the story about the princess and the pea? There was a hundred mattresses and at the bottom of them was a pea. She was so sensitive she could feel the pea all the way through them."
"I'm a vegetable under a hundred mattresses," he muttered. Now he was looking at me like I was a little bit unhinged.
"That's exactly what you are," I said. The analogy was strange, but I was sticking to it.
"What happened to the pea?" he asked.
"Um…"
That was where my story fell apart.
"She slept better after the pea was removed," I admitted. She might have married the prince or something, but that was a minor detail.
He smirked. "Bad luck. I'm not going anywhere."
"Of course you're not, because you like me," I said, smiling sweetly.
He rolled his eyes. "You live in a strange reality." Tone dripping with sarcasm, he added, "This isSwan Lakeand we're all in some fancy-ass fairy tale."
"See, you do like me," I said, triumphant. "If we're inSwan Lake, that means we're swans. Swans mate for life."
"It's true," Savannah said from behind us.
I'd almost forgotten she was there.