“But you should see him in limbo contests.”
Mac was not in the mood to laugh. “So what am I in this scenario, Avalon? Am I like the gamekeeper fromLady Chatterley’s Lover?”
She hesitated.“Isn’t that kind of hot?” she tried. Weakly.
“That’s beside the point.”
“Did you actually readLady Chatterley’s Lover, Mac? Or just watch a porn version?”
“Lady Chatterley’s Loveristhe porn version ofLady Chatterley’s Lover. Don’t change the subject.”
“What is the subject, exactly?”
Good question. Jealousy was not in and of itself a subject.
“No guy comes three hours out of his way in the dead of night for business reasons. He wants you back.”
She gestured weakly to her sweat-shirted, ponytailed, paint-splotched self. “Can you blame him?”
Her insouciance just seemed to infuriate him.
“He’s adog,” he pointed out, slowly, blackly. “And not the fluffy kind needing rescuing.”
Now she was really angry. “Thank you for the recap. You, on the other hand, are the... the Dalai Lama.”
“I’m thewhat?”
“Or someone else with a stainless soul and faultless motives who would never, ever hurt me.”
The last few words were a trifle nasty and carried an implication that made Mac wary. “Avalon, I just...”
He didn’t know how he wanted to complete that sentence. Or rather he did. But none of those things felt safe to say, none of them added up to a definitive reason to keep her out here in the cold. They were things like: Ijustwant to gather you up into my arms right now because it seems I can’t stand it when you’re upset, even when—especially when—I’m the reason. I just want to talk to you forever about nothing and everything, just ramble on and on, as if we existed in our own time and space. I just don’t want to have this conversation. I don’t want to decide anything. I just want to do you in every imaginable way and watch your eyes go hot, and then hazy, and then close when you come, and once in a while, if I get lucky, hear you say my name.
All of those things were true.
“Mac...” She sounded tense. “If you have something to say could you please just—”
Fuck the consequences. “Are you going to sleep with him?”
Her mouth dropped open.
“Whatdo you think I... first of all,howis that any of your business? This whole... our whole...thing...with you and me was based on the premise that this, and I quote, doesn’t have to be any ‘big thing.’ Because that’s how you roll, right?”
Her sentence had begun sort of self-righteously astounded. But that last question, which she’d likely intended to deliver sardonically, faltered somewhere along the way. It became a genuine question. Almost an entreaty.
It rang there in the night air, alongside those little white ghosts of their breath.
Well.
Wasn’t it just how he rolled?
He’d started this little encounter tonight, but he hadn’t a clue how he’d intended to finish it. Because for more than the last decade all he did was start at the beginning of things and didn’t abandon them until he was finished. He knew every step along the way.
And he always, always knewhowthey would finish.
“Maybe...” he said carefully. “I said that to give you room to decide what you wanted.”
“Or was it to get whatyouwanted.”