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“I mean, not just because he’s half-angel. Because he’s him. ” Jesus, why was he doing this? Why couldn’t he just shut the hell up?
“Alex, will you—” Willow broke off, looking frustrated. “Yes. Okay? I care about Seb a lot. I’d care about him a lot even if he wasn’t half-angel. The fact that he is just makes it an even stronger connection. But I don’t—” She worked the screwdriver against the panel again, turning it almost angrily. “I don’t want that to make you feel pushed out, or ignored. I love you. My friendship with Seb has nothing to do with our relationship. ”
“No, except that it feels like there’s three of us in it sometimes. ” He’d been thinking that for weeks; it was a relief to finally say it.
“Alex. ”
“Well, sorry, but it does. I hardly have any time with you now, do you realize that? We hardly had any time together before, and now we have even less. And even when we’re alone together—”
Her eyes had gone very large. “Even when we’re alone together, what?”
“You’re always thinking about him. ”
“I—” She stopped abruptly, cheeks reddening. Flustered, she glanced down; he saw her swallow.
Alex stared at her. It was something he’d wondered, but hadn’t really believed. He’d expected her to tell him he was being ridiculous. “You do, don’t you?” he said slowly. “When we’re alone together, you’re still thinking about him. Do you think about him even when we’re—”
“No!” she burst out. “God, of course not! How can you even say that?”
“Well, I don’t know what to think! Help me out here, okay? How exactly are you thinking about Seb when we’re alone together?”
“I don’t! It’s – there’s this sort of link between us, that’s all. Like, I can see what he’s doing, or where he is in the house. . . ” She trailed off at the look on his face.
“Say that again,” he said, the world ringing in his ears. “You have a link with him? You can psychically see whatever he’s doing?”
“Not all the time! Just – I might get a flash, sometimes. ”
“Like when you’re thinking about him,” he said acidly, and saw her cheeks turn redder. “So what about him? Does he have this link too? Can he watch everything you do?”
“Alex, you’re getting totally the wrong idea about this, I promise you—”
“Answer the question!”
“I don’t know!” she burst out. “I haven’t asked him. ”
“So give me your best guess,” he gritted out. “Yes or no – can he do this too, with you?”
There was only one screw left on the cover; Willow shoved it on. Her hand on the screwdriver was unsteady, her jaw tense. “I don’t want to talk to you about this now. You’re too upset. ”
“Oh, man, you haven’t even seen upset. This is a ‘yes’, isn’t it? You’re telling me that all he has to do is think about you, and he can see you, no matter what you’re doing. ”
She looked close to tears, but also angrier than he’d ever seen her. “It’s not like that! You’re making it sound really sleazy or something. ”
“Yeah, sorry – this is just a pure friendship thing, isn’t it? So if you thought about Seb right now, in the shower—”
She jammed the tools away in the toolbox and jumped to her feet. “Stop it,” she snapped. “You’re acting like a lunatic. Which part of we are just friends do you not understand?”
He rose too; he could feel the blood beating at his brain. “Oh yeah, because it’s really my comprehension skills that are the problem here – I just don’t get it, do I? You know what? Maybe I get way more than I want to. ”
Her face went white. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Alex gripped her arms. “It means he is in love with you,” he hissed into her face. “And now you’re telling me you think about him even when you’re alone with me, and the two of you share this amazing psychic bond that means he can picture whatever you’re doing, whenever he wants – and I’m supposed to be happy with that? I’m supposed to go, ‘Oh yeah, I guess all that’s just normal when you’ve got a half-angel girlfriend’. ”
Willow was struggling against tears. “Alex—” She took a breath. “Look – please, please, can we talk about this later, when we’ve both calmed down? I promise you, it isn’t like what you’re thinking. ”
Alex stared at her for a moment, and then swore and started out of the range. She caught up with him, grabbed his arm. “Wait – where are you going?”
He pulled away from her. “Where the hell do you think? To throw him out of the house. ”
“No! Alex, stop. ”
“What? Are you saying you don’t want me to?”
“Of course I don’t want you to!”
He could not remember ever having been this angry; it was like a fire raging through him, sizzling his thoughts. The rarely-used front door was nearby, he grabbed her hand and pulled her along to it with him; got it open and them both outside, slamming it shut behind him.
“Let me get this straight,” he said in a low voice, with the night air suddenly cool around them. “You don’t want Seb to leave. You’ve just told me that he can conjure you up in his thoughts – but that’s okay with you, and you want him to stick around. ”
She had her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her voice was thin, but steady. “You’re making way too much of this,” she said. “It’s just flashes sometimes. And I think our angels would stop it from ever being too. . . intimate, if neither of us wanted that. ”
Alex was too angry to even be relieved. “He does want that, though. Did you hear me, about him being in love with you?”
Her cheeks went pink. “Yes, I did. Look, I know he wants to be more than my friend. But he’s okay with just friendship – I told him it could never be more than that the very first day. ”
Alex stared at her. How could she actually believe that? She and Seb were each the only half-angel the other knew – there was no way the guy was going to be happy with just being friends for ever. And the two of them were so close already, after less than three weeks. What would happen when Seb finally made his move? They’d be so entwined in each other’s minds and hearts by then – how was she supposed to resist feeling the same?
He stood against the door, rubbing his forehead against a vicious headache that was starting to pound. “I’m not happy with this,” he said finally. “I don’t care if you have friends who are guys, okay? I really don’t. But this, this is something else. You’re in each other’s heads. You have this intense. . . need for each other, or something. ”
She seemed to have turned into a statue. “What exactly are you saying?”
He dropped his hand. “I’m saying I want it to stop,” he said. “You know how to change your aura now, so you don’t need to be alone with him all the time any more. And once this is over with, I want him gone. ”
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