Page 46 of Tracking Snow

Then I nod slowly, as something inside me goes very, very still.

"You're right," I say.

He blinks, thrown off.

"No, I mean it." I force my shoulders level, though my whole body wants to curl around the impact. "I'm human. I bleed when someone hits me. I get concussed. I need drag queens with healing magic to keep me from spending the night in a hospital. I can't split myself into seven different emotionally constipated men just to avoid having one honest feeling."

His mouth parts.

"I'm not like you," I add, quieter. "Thank the fae lords for that. Because when I care about someone, I don't make them feel disposable five minutes after I've touched them."

For a second, his brows pull up in the middle, and his throat works hard. Then he puts it away, piece by piece, until there's nothing left.

Of course he does.

One takes a step back, and somehow that hurts worse than anything he's said. Like he's already removing himself from the scene. Like this is a mission completed, a bad habit corrected. A human girl put back in her place.

"Humans should be with humans," he says.

It is so lame. So cowardly.

My body wants to argue. My stupid, traitorous heart wants to throw itself at him and prove I can take more. Hit me harder. I'll still get up. Push me away. I'll still follow. Tell me I'm useless. I'll become useful if it kills me.

And that’s the worst realization of all.

Because I would.

For him, I would try to become something I'm not just to stand close enough to matter.

The thought humiliates me so completely my tears dry before they can fall.

He disappears into the mouth of the alley, hood up, shoulders rigid, taking all that storm-taste and cedar-steel warmth with him.

I stand there until the night swallows him completely.

For one stupid, humiliating second, I still feel him.

His mouth. His hands. The weight of him under me. The warmth of him inside me. His voice calling me beautiful like he'd reached into the ugly, mismatched cabinet of my soul and found something worth displaying.

Now I'm a mess he regrets touching.

Just a human.

The words don't land once. Again and again they eat at me, each time finding a softer place to bruise.

Then I press one hand to my chest, right over the place that is still stupidly, stubbornly trying to reach for him.

"Stop," I whisper.

Chapter 16

Bibbidi Bobbidi Bingo at the PCC

SNOW

"The best way to cleanse thyself of a bad male," Ariel says from the doorway of my bedroom, already in her going-out clothes of glitter and leather, "is to party like a girl."

Ariel has decided I’ve moped long enough the last couple of days, and we were going out. To the Pumpkin Coach Club.