Page 73

“She’s always interrupting. That’s basically her job.”

He looks at me again, and for the first time tonight, something almost human breaks through the coldness.

I let out a breath. “I know you’re angry,” I say.

“Yes.”

“I would be too.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“I know.”

The words sit between us.

I don’t know what else to say. Everything I have feels too small.

So I do the wrong thing.

I reach out and touch his sleeve. Just my fingers on the fabric near his wrist.

It’s not much. But he reacts.

Not visibly to anyone else, maybe. But I feel it. The slight pause. The tension through his arm. The way his attention drops to my hand and then returns to my face.

“Dalton,” I say, and his real name feels strange after two weeks of D.

He takes my wrist. For a second, I think he’s going to move my hand away.

Instead, he steps forward. I step back automatically and hit the side of his car. The metal is cold through my dress. He’s warm. Too warm. Close enough that I can feel him without him quite touching me everywhere. One hand still around my wrist. The other braced against the car beside me.

My breath catches.

This is stupid. This is the worst possible place for this.

Alester is inside. Petra is probably watching through some window. My car is waiting. I’m pregnant, maybe with Alester’s child, maybe with⁠—

No. I can’t finish that thought.

Dalton’s face is close to mine.

He doesn’t kiss me. He just looks at me, angry and controlled and not nearly as unaffected as he wants to be. “You don’t get to touch me like that and then look surprised when I respond,” he says.

My pulse jumps. “I wasn’t surprised.”

“No?”

“No.”

That’s not entirely true. But I’m not moving away.

His eyes drop to my mouth, then back to my eyes. For a second, I think he’s going to kiss me right there against the car.

I want him to.

I shouldn’t, but I do.

Then a car door closes somewhere behind us, and the sound breaks the moment.