Page 30 of Rhodes

"Tallulah."

She looks up.

I meet her eyes across the room. "How do we do this so I quit stepping on you? I miss my friend."

Her spine straightens. The highlighter comes out of her mouth and lands on the table.

"Don't."

"Don't what?”

"Don't do the calm voice." She flips a page she isn't looking at, then flips it back. "You think you're being subtle, but you're not. I know damn well what this is."

I pick up the plate I rinsed an hour ago and rinse it again. The water over my knuckles feels good and saves me from standing here like a deer in headlights.

"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. You know exactly what this is? I'll tell you what it is from my side. It's two friends rooming for a semester. That's it. If I'm wrong, please enlighten me."

"Everybody in my life does this." Her jaw is tight. "Daddy calls to ask about the beds and then asks how I'm sleeping. Libba texts me at ten to see if I'm home. Coop packed me up like luggage and dropped me here because he couldn't stand to leave for Spain unless somebody was watching the exits." She taps the table once, hard.

"You've got me wrong, Tallulah."

"I'm not stupid, Rhodes. Coop said it to my face. You two talked and decided this without even letting me know the conversation was happening."

I set the plate in the rack harder than I mean to, and it clacks against the one beside it.

I don't tell her she's wrong about Coop, because she isn't, and she knows she isn't. I don't tell her she's overreacting, because I've watched fifteen people I love reach for her at once, and I'd throw punches too.

I dry my hands on the towel and look at her.

"Listen."

Her eyes cut to mine. She's got the next thing loaded. I can see it sitting behind her teeth.

"When, in all the years you've known me, have I ever been a man who manages anybody? Think carefully. This includes managing myself."

The kitchen goes quiet, and the steam from the rice ticking under the lid is the only sound.

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

I watch it happen on her face, the way you watch a wave lose its shape before it reaches the sand. She's got the whole speech built, every plank of it nailed down, and it was built for her father and her brother and every hand that's ever closed around her arm. She aimed it at me because I'm the one standing in the room.

Nobody has ever accused me of running anything, least of all another person's life. And I know she knows that.

Her mouth closes. She looks down at the highlighter on the table like she's not sure how it got there.

"That's not," she starts, but doesn't finish it.

I don't push. I've got her on the one honest thing I have, and pressing it would just hand her a reason to build the wall back. So I turn to the stove and lift the lid, letting the steam roll up between us.

She's quiet a second, working the highlighter cap on and off with her thumb. When she looks up again, the sharpness has burned down to something steadier.

"You'd do anything for Coop."

I stir the rice once and set the spoon on the rest. There's no point dodging her assertion.

"I'd do a lot for Coop," I say. "That's true. Not going to pretend it isn't."

"So."