I leaned back in my chair. “Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to figure me out.” He tilted his head. “Won’t work, trust me. What’s the title?”
I sighed. Arguing with him was like being stuck in a maze—no matter how many times I thought I found an exit out of the conversation he trapped me again, damn it. He must be hell to live with or negotiate with. “Losing Him.”
I said it quietly, then I waited for his reaction.
He lowered his head, smile vanishing. “I wonder . . . what it would be like to be missed that much.”
“People would miss you, Julian.”
“The thing about being in a coma,” he said, completely ignoring me, “is that you’re not dead, but you’re not moving in any direction either. The world doesn’t stop just because your body does. And when you wake up, you realize that the world is the same place without you in it, better in some ways you couldn’t have expected or accounted for. Most people wake up thankful they’re still living, they don’t wake up and wonder if it would matter if they were dead.”
I couldn’t speak.
So I reached across the table with my bandaged right hand. “Only someone who hasn’t been told what great value they have would say that. Either you’re incredibly stupid, incredibly selfish—”
“Both,” he interjected. “At times I think I’m just a little bit both, not for lack of trying to step outside my own world.”
“You’re not stupid,” I said lamely.
He just looked up at me, eyes empty. “I had a woman who loved me, who would do anything for me, and it still wasn’t enough. Yes. I’m stupid, very stupid. It would be a disservice to this new friendship of ours to say otherwise.”
“Friendship?”
“Well, we are writing a book now . . . though I’ll of course give you all the credit, just say something like ‘to my pancake-making friend, you know who you are,’ in your acknowledgments.”
I laughed, thankful for the change of subject. They were dark, the thoughts his mind had, and I didn’t know him well enough to make him feel better about the world he lived in, or his place in it.
And the last thing I wanted to do was lie.
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” I could practically feel my heart sinking into my stomach at the thought of telling him personal things, things that he would know and write down. And then I felt like an idiot for letting it affect me like that, because soon the world would know it all anyway, so what’s the harm in one person knowing before everyone else? Especially if it meant I could get it done faster?
“Not really, no. Plus, I’m not used to being bored, and I’m not one of those people that can just meditate in front of the fireplace and think deep thoughts without wanting to run my head through a wall, so this will be a nice distraction . . .”
“Ah yes, because depressing stories without happy endings are always the way to go when you’re snowed in and possibly suffering from frostbite.” I snorted.
“Just because you type the end to one story doesn’t mean you don’t get to start another,” he said wisely as he stood and made his way back to the stove. “How much syrup do you want?”
Stunned, I stared at his muscled back. How did someone so wise at times put such a lack of value on his own life? Like he was easily replaceable, when the man I was getting to know was unlike any man I’d ever known.
“Keaton?”
“Sorry,” I sputtered. “Lots of syrup.”
“She likes sweet things,” he commented.
And stupidly the first thoughts that entered my mind were about his smile . . . and then his lips.
Great. Just. Great.
Chapter Twelve
JULIAN
We ate in silence. Her demeanor had changed enough for me to take notice, when I really wished I wouldn’t take notice—of anything.
I hated that I normally made a decision about a person within the first few seconds of meeting them. And Keaton? I’d thrown her into the spoiled brat and wannabe Instagram-famous category before she even opened her mouth.
And then quickly transferred her into possibly murderous when she pointed the knife at me.
Now? Now I was noticing something that made me want to look the other way, as if she needed privacy and I was intruding. Privacy to feel, privacy to mourn, to think, to believe the simple lie that there was something she could have done to prevent the death.
The deafening silence of the cabin, of the snow outside, along with the cold, hard reality that we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, had me doing something out of character like reflecting and letting the universe do its thing. God knows I’d spent my entire life trying to manage everything.
And now I was stuck.