He was the fulcrum of her entire life. She would hate him again in a second or two. That inevitability was bearing down on her like a train. But the span of a few drumming heartbeats protected a moment of pure recognition. Like a disaster or a disease, he had changed everything.

She would change it back.

“Holy hell,” Jonathan said. But not about the gun. The comment seemed general—an inadequate caption for all she’d just been thinking.

She didn’t have a reply for it. But the hate came back in a rush that wasn’t hot or cold or blinding or pounding. It was just the next irresistible thing. The next breath, the next blink, the itch on her cheek. She flicked her fingernails over the spot to scratch it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said. “Why didn’t you come to me when you found out where I was? Why didn’t you let me know you’re alive?”

She cocked her head as she would if she were confused, which she wasn’t. “I did.”

“Not like that. I don’t mean tonight. I don’t mean showing up at my house with no warning and giving me a heart attack.”

“How would you like me to have done it? Please, tell me. I’ll take notes for the next time.”

He drew a breath that suggested patience with her pain and pique. The gun warmed in her hand, reminding itself to her, as if it hated him, too.

He sighed. “When you showed up in front of my family like that, I didn’t get any chance to tell you how glad I am that you’re okay. I would have. You didn’t give me that chance.”

“Well, I didn’t get the chance to say, ‘Fuck you, Jonathan.’ We were both having to be so careful earlier, both of us just busting with so many things we wanted to say. But nothing’s stopping us now. So, fuck you, Jonathan.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you want me to say. You’re alive. You made it through. This is incredible.”

“That’s certainly a word for it.”

“There’s no way I could have known,” he said, oozing warm reason. “You know that. You don’t know how glad I am that you’re okay. You don’t know how it’s been for me all this time.”

She breathed down into her middle and swallowed a scream. She imagined it was the feeling of a cat retracting its claws. “I’m almost afraid to ask how stupid you think I am.”

“Marcelline, look. I was devastated over what—”

She moved her gun hand into her lap. “We’re not going to get a lot of mileage out of this treadmill. I mean, you can say it again if you want, but it’s starting to piss me off.”