Page 27 of Smoke

Just when I thought she couldn’t surprise me. I burst out laughing. “What?”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on. You can tell me. I’m practically family.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I murmured, turning my attention back to the road.

We’d been driving for hours, and I wasn’t sure about her, but I was starting to lose hope of ever finding Alina. Maybe Jasmine’s vision was a blip, an anomaly, and all I was doing by cruising down a dark highway on a rainy night was earning a punch in the face from my brother.

Who was I kidding? It would be a lot worse than a punch in the face.

“You wouldn’t go that far. Ouch.”

“I don’t mean any offense. You’ve lived with us for a few weeks. You were sick for some of that time. We haven’t had a lot of time to develop a close kinship.”

“You sound like a robot sometimes. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Now that you mention it? Yes. I’ve heard that before.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“I didn’t say it doesn’t bother me. Only that it’s happened before.”

She waited for a beat before replying, “So why do you hold yourself back the way you do? It bothers you that somebody called you a robot. Why do you keep acting like one?”

“It’s who I am—and, by the way, being bothered when called a robot isn’t the same as hating who I am. I don’t want to change. This is my nature. It would be like denying my dragon. After a thousand years, I don’t even think it would be possible to be anybody else.”

“That’s admirable,” she murmured with a smile in her voice. “Even so, has it ever occurred to you that maybe you could—I don’t know—lower your shields a little and relax?”

“Lower my shields?”

“You know what I mean. If you care about Alina the way I think you do, you should’ve said something to her about it before she left.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Because you don’t like talking about your feelings?”

“None of us likes talking about our feelings, Jasmine. It’s not what we do. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

“I’ve only been with you guys for a few weeks, remember?”

I had to laugh. “All right. You got me.”

“Seriously, though,” she chuckled, “you could’ve told her. She was just dying for you to.”

A pang of regret touched me. The dragon was silent for once, I didn’t have to listen to him disagreeing with her out of hand and could actually reflect. “Was she? I mean, you know that for sure?”

“I admit that we never talked about it, because she’s always been a very private person. But I can read her like a book. Whatever she’s thinking or feeling is right there on the surface. She doesn’t have to say anything. It’s all visible.”

I knew that. I knew Alina. I had seen the pain on her face and heard it in her voice. She didn’t need to come out and tell me I was hurting her. Even so, it was easier to tell myself I was imagining things or only seeing what the dragon wanted me to see to prove its point.

“Why didn’t you tell her?” she pressed.

I gripped the steering wheel tight enough for my knuckles to go white. Why couldn’t she leave me alone? “Because it was difficult enough to let her go. Is that what you want to hear? Is that enough for you to drop this topic? I wish you would.”

“It wouldn’t have been as difficult on her if you had just let her know that you didn’t want it to happen that way.”

“How? How would that have made her going away easier?”

“I didn’t say easier,” she muttered. “Just less difficult. She wouldn’t have to wonder over and over if she was nuts for thinking there could ever be anything between you two. She might not have to feel so alone.”

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