Page 41 of Hazard a Guest
“No.”
They watched each other for a second, the context of many years of friendship simmering between them, bubbling away that little blip in the middle of that and this, where they had fallen out.
She knew he actually cared, and it was truly a little bit terrible.
“Yes, all right, fine,” she said with a frown. “I like him very much. Too much.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She stared at him. Was the answer to that not completely bloody obvious? Had Freddy lost his whole memory in addition to his sense? “He’s not for me,” she reminded him. “You said it yourself.”
There was a beat of quiet, of held gazes where Ember could hear nothing but the sound of her own heart in her ears.
“I did say that,” Freddy said softly, looking sick about it. “I’m a stupid bastard. It’s not true.”
“It is true,” she moaned, dropping her head into her hands. “We both know it’s true.”
“No!” He slapped her wrists, hard enough to sting, a thread of light panic in his voice. “No, stop that! Since when do you listen to the likes of me? Be sensible!”
“Ow!” she hissed, and slapped him back.
He laughed, he really laughed, holding his own arm where she’d struck him and letting his face fully crinkle into the absurdity of it.
He leaned back and watched her, panting and furious, and it seemed to only make him happier.
“Good God, Donnelly,” he said fondly. “I think you’re in love.”
CHAPTER 15
She hid in her room for an entire day.
No one noticed, so it was all right.
The only interruption had been trays of food and once, quite late at night, an exhausted-looking physician with flecks of something unspeakable on his cuffs, asking in a raggedly hopeful voice if she and Hannah werequite all right in there?
If it was the pasties that had saved them, Ember privately swore to eat them every day for the rest of her life. Hannah, however, did a lot of groaning and grousing about wanting to go back to the tables.
“Why do you want to go back?” Ember asked. “You don’t play, do you?”
“No, of course not,” Hannah clipped. “I watch.”
And Ember had frowned because the girl sounded uncomfortably familiar. She didnotsay “I watch too.”
Mustn’t encourage such things, no matter how relatable they were.
Once the sun had set, once she knew the earth had done a full, leisurely stroll all the way ’round it, Ember decided she ought to grow up again and stop hiding from the world. Or from herself, perhaps? It was really hard to do that second one.
She still had the dice she’d pilfered from the gaming tables, and Freddy, in all his helpful buffoonery, had given her explicit directions to Joe’s bedroom when he’d been in here tormenting her the day before.
She’d stared at him, considering where one might hit him to cause the maximum effect of pain, and he’d only laughed at her and skipped away like a demented fae.
She hated Freddy Hightower. And she loved him. That was the tragedy of that man. It was why it had hurt so damned badly when he’d done what he did, and it was why it was so confoundingly reassuring to see him as he was since they’d arrived here: part restored, part … something else.
Something better.
She sighed, shaking the thought away, and let herself focus on the now, on the bottle of wine Merryn had pilfered for her from the kitchens and the quartet of dice she’d pilfered for herself.
And for him. For Joe.
