Page 102 of Break Away
Her eyes snapped up. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m studying.”
“No, you’re hiding behind a case brief and pretending it’s more interesting than the fact you’re scared.”
Her expression went flat. “Careful with those assumptions.”
I stopped at the foot of the bed and braced one hand against the frame. “No.”
“No?”
“No. Don’t careful me from my own room while you’re sitting in my bed wearing my sweatshirt because you needed somewhere quiet to fall apart without an audience.”
Her lips parted, then closed. The laptop screen cast soft blue light beneath her jaw, but the rest of her was warm shadow and stubborn pride.
“I’m not falling apart,” she said.
“Then shutting the laptop shouldn’t be hard.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re bossy when you’re tired.”
“I’m bossy when someone I care about is lying to my face.”
The words landed.
I saw them hit before she could cover it. Her shoulders drew back, her mouth hardened, and the woman who could cut an entire room into ribbons with one raised brow looked at me like I had stepped too close to something real she had never meant to show me.
“You don’t care about me,” she said.
I laughed once, low and humorless. “Don’t start a fight because the truth makes you twitchy.”
“I’m not twitchy.”
“You’re one insult away from calling me emotionally constipated and pretending that counts as a personality assessment.”
“It does.”
“It doesn’t.”
“It does when it’s accurate.”
I took the laptop before she could stop me.
Her hand shot out, but I was faster. I closed it with one hand and set it on my nightstand, well beyond her reach. Her eyes flashed, and there she was again, mean, alive, and furious enough to breathe around the fear.
“You have three seconds to return my laptop before I make this ugly,” she said.
I sat on the edge of the bed facing her. “Make it ugly.”
Her brows lifted.
I leaned closer, letting her know I wasn’t backing down. “Come on, Aura. You’re dying for a reason. I just gave you one.”
She stared at me for a beat, then scoffed. “You are so fucking arrogant.”
“And you’re deflecting.”
