Page 88 of Even Robots Die
I killed someone’s friend.
I killed someone.
And I don’t know how to live with the idea.
“And at last she wakes up,” Brice says from where he’s looking at me at the door.
His shoulder is propped against the door frame, his arms crossed under his chest and one leg crossed over the other.
He’s looking at me like he’s trying to find the best way to rile me up, that signature smirk—that I hate to love—in place, and his green eyes following all of my movements.
“If you’re here to piss me off, it’s not the right time,” I tell him with a sigh.
I want to be angry at him, but all the fight left me when the weight of my actions finally settle on my shoulders.
I’m amurderer.
“What if I want you to fight me?” he asks nonchalantly.
“Then you can go to hell,” I bite back. “What good would it be to you, anyway? You can’t even feel amusement …”
“What if making you mad is the only moment I actually feel something?” he asks with the same bored tone.
“You can’t joke about that, Brice. It’s not funny.”
He walks from the door and squats just in front of me as I sit on the bed.
“I don’t say that to be funny,” he tells me, his eyes never leaving mine, and I almost want to believe him. “Would it be so hard to think that you make me feel something?”
I snort.
Why he had to word it this way, I have no idea.
“Don’t believe me if you want,” he says. “It’s up to you. What isn’t up to you, though, is the fact you haven’t eaten in days.”
“Aren’t you exaggerating again?” I say with another snort. This one is even more unladylike than the first.
“Tell me the last time you kept a meal down,” he demands with a knowing smirk.
When I don’t answer, he keeps talking.
“I can ask for something healthier if you prefer, but I thought you would be more agreeable to eating something sweeter. Those never seemed to last very long in Blois, and it’s always fun to pick them and see which ones will disappear the fastest.”
“Did you pick all my pastries?” I ask in disbelief.
I don’t know what’s worse, that I kept eating what was delivered every day—I’m pretty sure my clothes didn’t see this as a good thing—or that I didn’t think he was the one picking them. And that I liked something he prepared for me.
“I didn't pick them individually. I gave orders on what to retrieve,” he says in that same bored tone he used a minute ago. “Are you not going to eat this one? Is it not good? I can get something else if it’s not to your liking.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say in a small voice that I don’t recognize.
“I’m not going to ask you to eat for me. I’m pretty sure you would throw thatpain au chocolatin my face if I do, but do it for your father. If we’re going to go out now, you need your strength. You can’t go running after your father with no energy. We don’t know what we’re going to find,” he tells me.
“We?” I ask with a sneer. “There’s no we.”
If he wanted to find a way to piss me off, he’s on his way alright.
“I won’t let you go alone,” he tells me as he stands and forces me to look up at him.
