Page 87 of Problematic Summer Romance

“But you liked it, too. And that’s why for the past three years you never once declined a call from me. You always reached out if you didn’t hear from me for a few days. We became really intimate, emotionally. So much so, you couldn’t risk that intimacy to become physical, too.”

I pause. Give him a chance to object. Instead, he just observes me, granite hard.

“It made it easier, didn’t it? The distance. The phone.” Another wave rolls in. “Tell me if I’m wrong—”

“You’re wrong.”

I lean closer. His eyes glint into mine, darker than the night around us. I refuse to let him look away. “Tell me if I’m wrong,” I repeat.

He doesn’t lie again. And all at once, for the first time in years,somethinggives. A turn of his head, a twitch in his mouth. He glances away, but when he faces me again, I can almost touch the change in him. His mouth parts. His body inches toward mine, the fabric of his clothes rough against my skin. The air surrounding us snaps, like a physical manifestation of the control he has held on to since Edinburgh.

The beginning of fracture.Admit the truth.Admit it.

A gust of breeze rises, whipping through his hair, then mine. “How do I make you shut up, Maya?”

“Just tell me that I’m wrong.” Slowly, I smile. “Buy my silence, Conor. Tell me that I got it wrong, and I’m never going to bring it up again. I’m going to text my new friend back, and—”

“Go to your room.”

I flinch back. Swallow my disappointment, straighten my spine. “You don’t get to tell me what to—”

“Maya,” he half growls. The sound comes from deep in his chest. “Go to your fucking room. Right now.”

And…Oh.

Oh.

That edge in his voice—I was wrong. He’snottrying to send me to bed, after all.

Something is not quite as it was.

I rise to my feet without asking him to explain himself. He and I no longer talk, anyway. We’re stuck in this complicated cycle of toxic silence and avoidance, and—this is the closest I’ve felt to him in ten months.

There’s no point in letting go now.

I start down the stone path, not bothering to pick up my phone. It’ll be here tomorrow, or it won’t. It’s hard to resist, the urge to turn around and investigate Conor’s eyes, make sure that he’ll follow me inside. But one of us has to take the lead, and I can be Orpheus.

I can keep going forward.

I can listen for his steps as he comes after me.

Chapter 27

He doesn’t knock, and I don’t expect him to. I’m leaning against the wall right in front of the door, waiting for him. I do briefly wonder whether I misunderstood, whether I’m crazy, whether he’ll change his mind, but he appears and mirrors my pose, back against the door, restructuring the shape of the room with his presence.

“Hey,” I say, soft even though the house is asleep, or too inebriated to pay attention to us. My neighbors are Nyota and Axel. The former is supportive of any interaction between Conor and me, and the latter…Axel is the kind of guy to give a universal thumbs-up to whoever’s about to get laid, be it person, anime character, or wild animal.

“Was it necessary, sending me up alone? I doubt Lucrezia patrols the hallways.”

“That’s not why, Maya.”

“What, then?”

“A chance for you to change your mind. Clear your head.”

“You’re assuming that I can’t think clearly when you’re around.”

“Ican’t think clearly when you are around.” He breaks eye contact. “You’re way too fucking young to—”

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