“Can I talk to you for a second?”
Oh, he wants totalknow.
He leads us out of earshot, to a small outcropping through a gap in the trail’s wooden fence. From here, I can see the sheep grazing near the castle, and I wish more than anything I could be one of them. Not a care in the world, no struggling freelance gigs or famous relatives, no fraught reunions with exes who fucked your life up so much you had to make a new one. Just grass.
Kit arranges himself atop a small boulder, crossing an ankle over his knee. I wait for him to say something, to start apologizing for what happened between us, to act like it happened at all. He doesn’t.
“What did you want to talk about?” I finally ask.
“Oh,” Kit says. “I didn’t. I just—I overheard.”
He overheard.
This isn’t about us. It’s about Kit saving me from strangers asking questions about my family, knowing better than anyone how that makes me feel. And now I have to stand here and receive his annoying fucking empathy.
“Am I supposed to thank you?”
“What?” Kit says. “No, I just didn’t want those guys to say anything weird to you about Este or Sloane.”
I shrug. “People say plenty of things to me all the time.”
“I’m sure they do,” Kit says. “I just felt—”
“Bad for me, yeah, I got that,” I say, “but here’s the thing. You stopped being part of my life. So you don’t get to jump in when you feel like it now.”
Kit touches a finger to his lips. “Okay.”
“I mean,” I go on, anger spiking in my chest, “if you wanted to look out for me, I can think of a few times you could have deigned to speak to me the past few years.”
“Theo.”
“In fact, if you’re gonna say anything to me now, how about”—I put on an imitation of Kit’s musical voice, complete with the faintest hint of a French accent, once lost but now brought back from the dead by Paris—“‘Theo, I’m so sorry about everything, I really fucked you over, that was pretty shitty.’”
“Theo.”
“‘I never should have left y—’ Are you laughing? Seriously?”
“It’s—”
Something wooly nudges my thigh.
“That,” Kit says.
Thatis a stout white sheep, who has apparently escaped the castle flock. The bell around her neck suggests this isn’t her first jailbreak.
“Oh,” I say. She stares up at me with her watery black eyes and prods me again with her nose. The bell rattles. “Hi.”
“I was trying to tell you,” Kit says.
I pat her fluffy head like she’s a dog. She bleats approvingly.
“As I was saying—”
The sheep butts my leg, harder now.
“Hey! Okay, okay.” I try to pet her, but she ducks and butts me again. “Really?”
“Baa,” she replies.
