“I saw you with him. I heard what he said. I heard him tell you how he loved you, and I heard him tell you how wrong he was. What I didn’t hear was you argue.”

“I was at work,” I countered. “I was standing at work while he bowed and scraped, his girlfriend in the next room and a pack of cameramen roaming around. With my boss trying to find any reason—any reason—to fire me. Did you really expect me to tell him what I thought right then, standing in the middle of the event I’d been charged with?”

“No, Lila. I guess I couldn’t,” he shot, the fire in him flaring. “But you didn’t tell me. You were going to. But you didn’t, and that left me wondering why. Why would you hide it from me? Haven’t I earned your trust?”

“Haven’t I earned yours?” On his silence, I pressed on, “How could I explain? In that moment, surrounded by socialites, how in the world could I have explained it all to you? You have to know I was going to tell you. And if you’d wanted to know so bad, if you’d seen the whole thing, then why not ask me? Why did you test me instead? I don’t expect subterfuge, not from you.”

“I don’t know,” he said, the heat gone, replaced by weariness and finality. “I guess I don’t trust you like I thought I did.”

I flinched from the pain of those words. “I have never given you any reason not to trust me, not one. And yet, you are so quick to assume I would turn my back on you.” Blocks. A few short blocks was all I had. I could feel the end approaching and shrank in its shadow. “That says more about you than it does about me. And if you honestly believe anything you just said, then I was wrong about you. Wrong about us.”

We fell silent as he turned the corner, my eyes on the hotel awning as it grew closer.

“Let’s face it,” he said with quiet detachment. “It was always going to end like this—we knew it from the start. My job was to be a distraction, and I think my work here is done.”

He pulled to a stop, not bothering to put it in park. But he looked at me with infinite sadness behind the blue of his eyes.

Something inside me came unraveled and collapsed. Tears, sharp and hot, stung my eyes, blurred my vision. I knew the end when I saw it. And so, I memorized his face for a long moment before opening the door and stepping into the cold.

I didn’t know if I’d ever be warm again.

25

Scorched Earth

KASH