Page 108 of Snowed In
My mouth slams shut as his attention darts over my shoulder and stays there. As if someone flicked a switch, his face goes so white you’d swear he was going to faint.
Already guessing what I’m going to find, I whirl around to see the other three standing a bit up the path, staring right at us.
But it’s not them I focus on. That would be Christian, who looms behind them, a tight expression on his face.
Shit.
Shit.
There’s a rushing in my ears, like a river in the distance, and even Isaac seems at a loss for words, his mouth opening and closing like a gaping fish.
Oddly, it’s Cormac who speaks first. Cormac who’s looking at his friend like he’s never seen him before. “What the hell is she talking about?” he demands.
“She’s not…she’s…” Isaac’s gaze bounces between the four of them like he doesn’t know who to focus on or what to do. “Nothing,” he says, a defensive note entering his tone. “She’s just being dramatic.”
A humorless laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it.
I just can’t.
I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with any of it.
Sophie straightens as I approach, a pained look on her face, but I brush by her, my heart beating so hard I feel like I’m going to throw up.
“I want to go,” I say to Christian, who just looks at me. “Now,” I plead, and march past him with a glance back at Aidan. Aidan, who’s not looking at me, who’s staring at Isaac with an expression I’ve never seen on him before. One that puts my “overprotective brother” comment into pale comparison.
My chest tightens at the sight, and I hurry back to the road and grab my bag from the back seat of Mam’s car. Cormac’s car is free from the snow and Christian’s is parked a little way up. He must have stopped to help just like we did.
I make a beeline right for it, only vaguely aware of him following me.
“Megan,” he calls, but I ignore him, waiting by the passenger door until he presses a button to unlock it. As soon as he does, I scramble inside.
“Please just drive,” I say when he joins me a moment later. “Please don’t say anything and just drive.”
“Are you seriously running away from this?”
“I’mtryingto,” I say pointedly.
“You need to go back there and tell them everything that—”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to!” I exclaim, and put my seatbelt on. Because I’m angry and embarrassed and the one thing about coming home I didn’t want to happen just did. “I was fine,” I continue, the words as frantic as my feelings. It’s like a dam burst and everything’s spilling out. “I was perfectly happy before this. Before coming back here and before—”
You.
I bite my tongue before I can say the word, but from the look on his face, he knows exactly what it was.
“I was doingfine,” I say, and my voice breaks on the last word. “Can we just go?”
“I think you need to—”
“I don’t care. I don’t care what you think. We’re not really together, remember? So you don’t get to advise. You don’t get to do anything.”
I clutch my bag to my lap, staring straight ahead, and ignoring the weight of his gaze on me. We stay like that for a full five seconds before he shuts the door, and a moment later, the car reverberates to life around me. His movements are choppy and frustrated, and I probably went too far, but I don’t care. My emotions are swinging so wildly right now I’m not even attempting to understand them.
“I’ll drop you home,” Christian says, and my head whips toward him.
