“I thought maybe you were changing your mind.” His voice is steady, a bridge over a barely contained river. “You were calling to tell them—”

“I wasn’t,” I lie. “I mean, I can’t.” I beg him with my eyes to understand. “I have to go.”

His face flickers from disbelief to anger to pain to anger again. Even now I can’t help but wonder how I ever thought he was anything less than gorgeous just because he looks nothing like his author photo. I drag my eyes from the top of his head to the long fingers that I can as easily imagine tangling in my hair as typing Orman. They are not clenched but hang limply at his sides, forgotten.

He appears to be burning from within, and he is beautiful, but I tell myself not to notice, because otherwise I will not leave.

“After I told you about the girls,” he says. “And this morning. After the bazaar and the photos? After everything I told you, you’ve decided that you’re just going to keep doing what you’re supposed to?”

Customers are starting to float in and out the door in search of lunch. We must make quite a sight, Nolan and Alex and Valerie and me, standing in a square of angry whispers and misunderstood feelings that move between us like poisonous vapors.

Valerie exchanges a look with Alex, but I can’t read it because Nolan is refusing to break eye contact.

I wasn’t wrong to think the forest behind his eyes was dark. I wasn’t wrong to think he was hiding. But as we look at each other, I see what I couldn’t make out a few days ago. He isn’t only hiding himself from the world; he has used the branches to protect his sisters, to protect his family from the prying eyes of those who would mishandle their memory and poke holes in Orman for sport. He has grown himself a wall of thorns to hide any shred of vulnerability, but last night he flicked his fingers and the thorns receded to let me into his inner sanctum. This morning, he gave me access to his very heart.

And now I’m betraying him by shoving it back into his chest.

He won’t be able to forgive me, so I give him one more reason to hate me as I break our connection, turning to Valerie. “I need to go upstairs and pack my things.”

“I will assist you,” she says, her voice unreadable.

I don’t look at Nolan.