figured out. Just when I think I can predict your next move, you prove me wrong. I mean, when you made Royal give you his sketches.” He tossed his head. “Royal wouldn’t even let me stare at them too long, and you sat there and gave the guy with the knife an ‘or else.’”
“It’s always nice to be a source of admiration.”
“There you go again.” The sunset painted his smile infinitely beautiful. “I never know what you’re going to say.”
Gazing at that rare perfect beam, my tongue tied. It became simultaneously dry and swollen, and I couldn’t have used it to lob another quip even if I wanted to.
“Do you know any Japanese?”
I shook my head.
“Come here.”
I moved over to him, shoulders glancing off each other as he shifted his manga between our laps. “You see this character.” Hiro pointed to a small depiction resembling a twig. “This means tree.”
He flipped the pages. “And this one. It’s three trees together meaning many trees. Where can you find many trees?”
My gaze swept the wide expanse. “The forest.”
“Exactly,” he said. “There. Two down, one thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight to go.”
I made a strangled noise. “Are you for real? That many?”
“Yep. That’s why I have to keep reading manga.”
“Of course,” I drew out. “I’ll help spread that lie if you need me to.”
Hiro’s laugh was smooth and rich like honey. “I can teach you the character for your name too. Ember.”
I sat up, knocking his knee and letting it stay there. “Really? I’d love that.”
“The way my name is written, Hiro means forgive. My parents couldn’t have picked a name that suited me the least if they chose big, sweet cuddle bunny.”
Bitterness ate his sarcasm. My hand lay over his fist. I hadn’t noticed it moved.
“But your parents knew what they were doing when they chose Ember. Part of the word literally translates to fire in Japanese, and that’s what you are. Wild. Beautiful. Dangerous. Warm.”
My head spun under the tide of praise and warnings.
“Unpredictable. Uncontrollable,” he rasped. Hiro’s fist unclenched under my grasp. “And untouchable.”
“I can be touched.” My voice was barely above a whisper.
I pressed Hiro’s hand to my face. My eyes fluttered shut as his touch skimmed my cheek, and then my lips.
“No.” He pulled back. “You can’t, Ember. This can’t. You and me.”
I gazed into suddenly hard, smoldering browns. “Why? Because of Cassius, Clay, and Royal? Is sharing me too much?”
“It’s not that.” He sounded like he meant it. “It’s because Hiro—forgiveness—will never be right for me. I’m hard, cold, brutal. I faced the same demons that torment you and they reshaped me too. Fire burns. It feeds and grows and becomes stronger. While ice, it only survives in the harsh conditions that made it, and without, it melts into nothing.
“You and I would be a disaster together, Ember. You’d make me believe in forgiveness and hope, and I’d remind you there is none.”
“Hiro,” I croaked. “Everything you just said... is a load of crap.”
“Amazing.” Hiro gathered his stuff and stood. “For the first time, I knew you were going to say that.”
I sat in the pavilion long after he was gone. It wasn’t every day a guy admitted he wanted to be with you and said you’d be a disaster together in the same breath. The ache in my chest should not have surprised me. I knew only trouble awaited if I crossed the velvet rope.
My phone trilled, yanking me out of my daze.
“Ember,” said Royal. “Where are you?”
“Outside in the pavilion.”
“Come to my room. Something happened.”
The loud phone call with Rio snapped into my mind.
“Oh shit. What is it now?” I thought of Hiro heading back to his dorm room. “Meet me outside or go to my room.”
“Your room.”
Click.
I hurried to my dorm. Royal waited for me inside, sitting on my bed while he talked to Camila. She was on her laptop like she always was these days. Working on her strike against Leo. No details were forthcoming. She said she couldn’t say until there was something to share.
“Royal says you guys need a minute alone.” She twisted to the side, waggling her eyebrows at me, and proving the entire Walker trio had raunchy minds. “I’ll go down and snag dinner. Text me when your clothes are on.”
I waved her out. No point telling her this was not that kind of party.
“Rio called,” I said. It was a statement, not a question. “What’s wrong?”
Royal shoved off the bed. “I have no fucking clue,” he burst out.