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But…I don’t stop myself—or maybe I can’t.

“Am I allowed to drink this now?” I ask innocently—and also not innocently at all. “Or should I wait for the man I’m supposed to be so in love with that I can’t think for myself to tell me I can?”

That doesn’t make him mad.

If anything, it seems to amuse him further.

“You should wait,” he says, leaning back in the chair across from mine, big body overflowing the leather seat, his long legs tangling with mine. Then he doesn’t say anything further, just lifts his glass to his lips and sips, eyes going out the window. “That does look like an elephant.”

* * *

I’m still holding the flute of champagne.

I’ve spent the last hour watching the bubbles crawl up the insides of the glass, popping as they poof out of existence.

Condensation gathering and eventually disappearing as the contents warm.

Meanwhile, Ace has had two more whiskeys neat, and he hasn’t moved back across the aisle. Instead, he’s in my space, watching me, waiting for me to crack.

No way.

I have a mental firehose blasting, spraying my insides with water that freezes instantly in the frigid confines of my heart.

My cold heart, underneath my hand,

Has almost ceased to thrill.

Bleak, bleak the east wind sobs and sighs…

Trust Brontë to come to mind when I’m off-kilter.

A poem about a martyr.

As I’m sitting here suffering by not drinking my now-warm glass of champagne.

Ugh.

Self-reflection is shit.

Stifling a sigh, I set the flute down onto the tray.

“Are we going to talk boundaries again?” His voice is as soft as velvet.

I shiver. “I’m sorry?”

He reaches up, twists the knob in the ceiling above my head, cutting off the flow of cool air that’s shooting onto me, and part of me notices that, realizes he thinks I’m cold. The rest is too focused on the sarcasm ringing through his words to care. “Do you have more boundaries to set?” he asks, lifting a brow, the corner of his mouth quirking. “Aside from fucking and kissing, that is.”

I narrow my eyes then reach into my bag and pull out my book.

Suddenly, reading seems like a good plan.

Better than stabbing him through the neck with the stem of my champagne glass anyway.

And that’s a morbid thought.

Go me.

“I think you’re smart enough to figure them out,” I say icily.