She gritted her teeth, planting her hands on the counter. It brought her closer to him, made her very aware of his size, his strength and the heat coming off of his body. But she did her best to ignore it. “You’re right,” she said, lowering her voice. “I do wish the impossible. I wish that your car had been the one to swerve. I wish you had hit the tree. I wish I was fine, and that I had never had occasion to know your name. I just wish...” She swallowed hard. “I wish I didn’t care. If I can’t fix it, I wish I just didn’t care.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. She didn’t want him to know that she was hurt. Yelling at him was one thing, but revealing emotion was quite another.
“Just these,” one of the women said, coming up to the counter, looking at Gage out of the corner of her eyes. A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Very handsome friend you have,” she said, putting an array of ceramic birds on the countertop.
Rebecca forced a smile in return and began to scan the barcodes on the birds, getting them all tallied up in the register before wrapping them in plain paper. “Sure, when he’s not getting in the way,” Rebecca responded finally, when she found a way to make her mouth work.
Her head was swimming, and her eyes stung. Her chest felt heavy, and her arm still burned where he had touched her. She wanted to go throw herself down onto her bed and weep for a solid hour. She wanted to yell at Gage some more. She wanted to let him sign the store over to her and pretend that it didn’t matter to her that she had accepted his pity and his charity.
She wanted to be stubborn forever, if only to make him miserable, so that he couldn’t feel like he’d won.
She wanted to feel normal.
She wanted a whole lot of things she wasn’t sure were actually possible.
Fishing a canvas bag with her store logo on it from beneath the counter, she gently put the ceramic birds inside and handed them to the woman. “Thank you for coming in,” she said, surprised at how normal her voice sounded when her insides were a screaming legion.
When the women exited, she was left alone with Gage again, who was still standing resolutely at the counter.
“She liked me,” he said.
“She doesn’t know you.”
“Neither do you,” he pointed out.
She gritted her teeth. “And, I’m never going to. Fine. I’ll help you with this. I’ll help with whatever. And then we’ll call the money you gave me even. And you can carry the loan on the store and I’ll continue to pay you monthly what I already pay in rent. I won’t fight you. Or work myself to death.” The words exited her mouth in a rush, and she knew that she was probably going to regret it.
“Works for me,” he said, his dark brows lifting in clear surprise.
“What?” she asked, bristling. “What’s that face?”
“I’m just surprised that you agreed to anything without fighting me.” He lifted a shoulder. “Although, I suppose that isn’t entirely accurate since you’ve been fighting me every step of the way. I guess I’m just surprised you stopped.”
“I’m not fighting you for the sake of it.”
“Yes,” he said, “you are. But I get the feeling that’s what you do with everybody.”
“How dare you? How dare you come in and comment on how I do anything? The way that I conduct my relationships is my business. And, largely formed—”
“Around that big chip on your shoulder.”
“Who put it there?” she shot back.
“Maybe I did. But, everyone else in your life didn’t. So if you’re going to try and pretend that you only act this way with me, and it’s because I deserve it, go ahead. But I watched you with your friends back at Ace’s.”
She snarled. “What did I say about acting the part of the creepy teenage vampire?” She moved from behind the counter, stomping across the narrow store to one of her seasonal displays, fiddling with a garland of autumn leaves and blowing out one of the candles she’d lit upon entry. She moved it, bringing out a candle that was in the cabinet that housed the display and lighting it. “I was doing just fine without you here. Everything in my life was going well. Yeah, I have to kind of grit my teeth to pay