Page 101 of Hollow Court
I tried again. “I… We should stop.”
There was barely a moment’s hesitation before his hands disappeared from my body and he straightened to his full height. I already mourned the loss.
Our panting breaths filled the silence until he finally spoke.
“Galina?” he asked, wariness coating his tone, as though he already knew what I was going to say.
“We can’t do this,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
My heartbeat was thundering so loudly, I wondered if he could hear it, too.
He swiped a thumb over his lip, his expression morphing into his indifferent mask as he considered my words.
“Because you want to be with Gallagher?” he finally asked.
I shot him an exasperated look. “Don’t be alaskipaa. No, I don’t want to be with Gallagher.”
He scoffed, shaking his head. “Then what?”
What did I want? What was the problem?
Weren’t those things rolled up into one?
For the second time tonight, I spoke without thinking. “I want someone who wants me for more than a single fleeting moment, Davin.”
A rare emotion crossed his features, darkening his eyes even in the moonlight.Anger.
“Single. Fleeting. Moment?” He bit out each word. “You don’t get to put that on me when you’re the one who called ita bit of funand then walked away, like it was nothing to you.”
“Nothing to me?” I demanded. “I’m not the one who made you believe that we were…friends when all I wanted was your information.”
“If I had wanted information,” he said, his voice rising, “there were a hell of a lot easier ways to get it than spending hours every night on a stars-damned freezing rooftop.”
His words felt true, but they didn’t soothe the old wounds like I expected them to.
All this time, I had thought that his lies were the worst offender, but for months after he left, every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was that witch in his bed, the bed that still smelled like us.
“If it wasn’tnothingto you, why was she even in your rooms that morning? Why were you telling her the things I had told you in confidence? A little pillow talk?”
“She was there because she was checking in as a spy for Lochlann. And yes, when I had information to help Rowan get out of Socair alive, I used it.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustration making the motion jerky. “But I didnotsleep with Aino—or anyone, for that matter—after that night you saved me on the rooftop. Which you would have known, had you bothered talking to me about it instead of running away the second things got the least bit complicated.”
Anger ignited in my veins as I took a single shaky breath.
Bothered talking to him about it? Like we had talked every storms-blasted night about his home and his family and his life as a guard and all the other things he lied about?
Like I could have just asked him and expected an honest answer.
Even now, I wasn’t sure how to process everything he had just said, wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him.
“The least bit complicated?” I was as close to yelling as I ever got, white, puffy clouds of furious air billowing out between us. “What the hell do you call our situation up until that point, Davin?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but I barreled over him.
“And if you had wanted more between us, you wouldn’t have sat on the information that you were in a position to—” I clamped my lips shut before I could give him that final piece of myself, the piece that I hadn’t been able to get past.
His eyes widened, and I cut in again before he could say anything else.
“It doesn’t matter, Davin. At least that was one thing you never bothered to lie about. You weren’t under obligation to want something just because I did.”