Page 54 of Glass Rose
“You two are disgustingly cute, you know that?”
She hands me the trowel. “At least I wake up with Marcus still in my bed.”
“Low blow.”
“But accurate,” she says. “Have you talked to him about it?”
“About what? The fact that he makes me come, then disappears before sunrise? Yeah, that conversation’s gone great in my head.”
Marcus clears his throat. “I should check on… something. Somewhere else.” He stands, brushes dirt from his knees, and drops a kiss on Min-Ji’s head before retreating.
Once he’s gone, she relaxes back on her palms. “So?”
“So what?” I stare at the skyline beyond the warehouse roof. “Where is he? Do you know?” I don’t want his stupid enhanced hearing to pick this up.
“Armory with John. Again.”
“Of course he is.” I stab the trowel into the soil. “He’s… I think he needs time. Fourteen months is long.”
“It is, but three weeks of fucking you and running is getting old. Even for someone with his trauma.”
“He’s not even fucking me.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “What do you mean he’s not fucking you? I’ve heard you two.”
“God, these walls are thin.” Heat crawls up my neck. “He… we do everything but that. Like there’s some invisible line he won’t cross.”
“The final frontier.”
“It’s not funny.” I rip out a weed. “He touches me everywhere, makes me come until I literally can’t remember my own name, then vanishes. Like he’s punishing himself for wanting me.”
“Have you considered he might be protecting you?”
“From what? His dick?”
“From attachment. From him.”
I laugh, hollow and brittle. “Little late for that.”
“You know.” She tosses the weed aside. “You’re a brilliantvirologist, but absolutely shit at relationships. You’re letting him set all the terms.”
I open my mouth, then close it. “That’s?—”
“You let him come to you. You let him leave. You never ask for what you want.”
“What I want is irrelevant in the fucking apocalypse.”
She grabs my wrist, forcing me to look at her. “The world ended. That doesn’t mean you have to settle for scraps.”
She’s right. I’ve been so grateful for any connection, any warmth, that I’ve accepted the pattern without question. Because I’m terrified of asking for the whole thing and hearing ‘no.’ Because that’s how it always went when I asked for more. “So what do I do?”
She hands me a bottle of water. “Either ask for what you want or stop wanting it. Limbo is just slow torture.”
I take a long drink, letting the cool water wash down the lump in my throat. “When did we become friends?”
“When I realized you were the only other woman who might survive this shit with me.” She moves to another container. “Now help me with these tomatoes before John lectures us about efficiency again.”
“So,” I say, “you and Marcus. Is that more?”
