Nora pursed her lips, frustrated. Not so much at him as for him.
“I’m sure they weren’t,” she said, even though she actually wasn’t. “But they seem like they were pretty negligent. So I think it’s really fine if you’re still a little pissed about it.”
“I’m not, though,” he said, with such strained, insistent conviction. “I haven’t been, not for a long time. They were who they were, and I dealt with that years ago. I hardly thought of them, until . . .” He trailed off.
“Until Donny,” she finished for him, anger at her former neighbor flaring again. She couldn’t regret that Donny’s last wishes had brought Will back to this building and into her life, but she hated that the apartment he’d been left had made him feel all this pain.
“No,” he said, dropping his eyes to the counter. “Until you.”
She blinked in surprise, dread settling along the column of her spine. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He shook his bowed head, resting his hands on the counter, his arms spread wide. A familiar posture.
“You and me,” he said. “And what we’re doing here.”
“What are we doing here?”
A long, awful pause, another shake of his head. “I don’t know, Nora. Too much, I think.”
“Too much what?” The dread that had settled was transforming into something else—something harder and more defensive. No matter how things had changed between them, it was familiar to her, this stiffening. She’d spent weeks feuding with Will Sterling, with confronting him, and she’d do it again now, if it meant figuring this out.
She tapped a finger against the counter. “Look at me.”
When he raised his head, she had the feeling he was doing what he’d done with the photograph. His eyes were on her, but somehow not; somehow it seemed he’d unfocused his gaze.
“I only mean that it’s gotten pretty serious, and I’m—” He took his hands off the counter, tucked them into his pockets. “I’m not looking for serious. I never have been. Before, with the stuff we were doing to your place, and . . .”
“And the sex?” she said, her voice sharp, accusatory, probably overloud. Dee would be proud of this, she thought. But it was so hurtful, to hear him say that. Not serious? Not serious, when he’d seen her sixteen years ago? When now it felt to her like fate? When she’d decided to tell him . . .
“I don’t mean that.” One hand came out of his pocket, another frustrated swipe across his forehead. “I don’t mean any—Nora, listen. I shouldn’t be talking right now. I’m rattled.”
“It was a picture,” she snapped, but as soon as she said it, she regretted it, and not only because he winced. Not only because she clearly didn’t understand the full extent of what he saw in that picture. But also because she was being the worst kind of hypocrite. The towel rack. The lamp she’d looked at for an hour this morning! Who was she to accuse someone of overreacting to an artifact, when she had a houseful of them upstairs that she was wringing her hands over getting rid of?
And anyway, what was she going to do, stand here and fight with a man to get him to be with her? She surely hoped Marian wasn’t hearing any of this. Clinging to that thought kept her chin from quivering in hurt as she stepped away from the counter.
“This is me,” he said, his eyes full of the kind of sympathy that made everything feel worse. “I know this is all me.”
Oh, God. An It’s not you; it’s me speech. She was not going to stick around for that. “I’m going to let you get back to what you were doing.”
She turned to go, but he caught her hand gently. “Nora.”
She could’ve turned back to him, could’ve stepped into arms that she knew he would put around her. But she was afraid of that chin quiver starting up. So she simply stood still, her back to him, her hand held loosely in his.
“I don’t want this to be over,” he said quietly. “I only need—”
He stepped closer, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body along her back. But she didn’t turn around. She bowed her head, and when he spoke again, she could feel the touch of his breath along her neck.
“A little time to think.”
She nodded once, trying to believe that time to think was what Will needed. He’d hurt her, taken