Page 52 of Love so Hot

"Larry?" My voice sounds small in the vastness that grows between us.

He doesn't answer, just stands and strides toward his discarded clothes. I watch, stunned, as he pulls on his shirt with swift, jerky movements. Each button he fastens feels like a door closing, locking me out.

"Hey," I say, scrambling to sit up, clutching a blanket to my chest. "What's going on?"

"Nothing." His tone is clipped, the single word slicing through the air.

"Nothing? You're bailing on me without a single word, and that's nothing?" Frustration flares up inside me, hot and bitter.

"Willow," he begins but then stops, raking a hand through his red hair. He looks away, and I can see the walls coming up, the shutters sliding back into place over those hazel eyes.

"Talk to me!" I demand, my voice rising. But he doesn't. He keeps moving, keeps dressing until he's all sharp lines and tailored edges again. Lawrence Sinclair, untouchable.

"Fine." I toss the blanket aside and stand too, feeling suddenly exposed. "Just walk away then."

He hesitates, his back a rigid barrier. For a heartbeat, I think he might turn, might offer some scrap of explanation. But then the moment passes, and he's gone, leaving a hollow silence behind.

"Damn you, Larry," I whisper to the empty room, to the shadows that seem darker now, more menacing. The pain of his abrupt departure digs deep, twisting into places I didn't know could hurt.

I'm left standing there, abandoned, the doubts creeping in with the chill of the Hollow’s morning air. What am I even doing? Playing house, playing lovers with a man who's as much an enigma as the murky depths of Greenwood Hollow.

"Is this all just a game to you?" I murmur to no one, to the ghost of his presence that still lingers. Our arrangement, the pretend affection, it's all a farce - and yet, for a moment, it felt real.

But real doesn't just up and leave without a backward glance. Real stays. It fights. It explains.

I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold together the pieces of whatever we just broke.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lawrence

The first lightof dawn trickles in through the kitchen window, casting a warm glow on the oak table where I sit with my coffee. I hear her before I see her; the soft thud of bare feet against the stairs. Willow descends like a storm cloud, green strands framing her face in disarray. The remnants of our heated exchange from last night hang between us, an invisible barrier.

I felt like shit for leaving her after, but I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know how to process what I was feeling at that moment, and being around her, seeing her, feeling her, it was just too much. So, I did what everyone else in my life does to me, and I left.

"Morning," I mutter without looking up from my plate.

"Morning?" she echoes, voice laced with that calm-before-the-storm quality she has. "Feels more like a prison sentence."

I glance up at her then, taking in the determined set of her jaw. Her green eyes are bright, but not with the tears that threatened to fall when I left—no, they're ablaze with that fiery spirit of hers.

"Freedom isn't measured by how early you can leave the house, Willow," I say, trying to keep things light, hoping to steer clear of another argument.

"Easy for you to say," she shoots back, folding her arms over her chest. Her handmade hemp shirt wrinkles at the motion, the emblem of Earth Defenders just visible beneath her open cardigan. She must have hid the damn thing under her mattress because I was sure to tell my staff to get rid of all her "originals."

"You're not the one being kept here like some... some caged bird."

"Come on, it's not that bad." I push my half-eaten toast aside, suddenly not hungry. The sound of birds chirping outside seems almost mocking now. "We have this whole place," I gesture vaguely to the surrounding walls of my home in Greenwood Hollow, "Nature right at our doorstep. Isn’t this your kind of scene?"

"Being surrounded by nature isn’t the same as being free to enjoy it," she retorts. "I need to move, to breathe, not just stare out the window at what I could be doing."

I take a sip of my cooling coffee, buying time. I know I've got to give a little here, bend so we don't break. But damn, it's hard when every instinct tells me she can't be trusted.

"Alright, spit it out. What do you really want?" I ask, leaning back in my chair and fixing her with a look that's meant to be patient but probably comes off more as barely restrained frustration.

She takes a breath, the kind that makes me brace for impact. "I want a car," Willow says, her green eyes steady on mine.

A car. Of all the?—

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