Hannah suppressed a jaded laugh. It took an extraordinary lack of self-awareness for Amanda to equate siblings with nonjudgment.
Zack closed his eyes and cracked a boyish grin. Amanda eyed him flippantly. “Still tickled about the tempis?”
“No.”
“Then what, pray tell, are you smiling about, Zachary?”
He folded his hands over his chest, his expression serene and contented. “Just nice to have you back.”
Hannah scowled cynically in the tender silence that followed. Shit. Here we go.
Amanda nestled up against him, resting her hand on his. As their fingers laced together, she suffered an unwelcome flashback to her alley encounter with Esis, the madwoman’s stern and cryptic warning. Do not entwine with the [something something]. Amanda couldn’t salvage the rest from her trauma-scarred memories. She had larger concerns now anyway.
She heaved a jaded sigh across Zack’s chest. “You’re a schmuck.”
He chuckled at her shiksa Yiddish. “Why am I a schmuck?”
“Because you’re being all sweet and I know it won’t last. You always run hot and cold with me.”
“Says the woman who sat on my lap, then threw me off a balcony.”
“You still blame me for that.”
“No. I always blamed Evan.”
“Then why did you get so distant after that?”
Zack considered pinning that on Evan too, but then he’d have to explain the teasing hint about Amanda and Peter, a romantic prophecy that still bothered him to no end.
“I’m too tired to open that box,” he replied. “Let’s just agree I’m a schmuck and move on.”
Hannah watched the cat roll around on the carpet, purring in mindless bliss. For a moment, she thought Amanda and Zack would do the same. Now she wasn’t sure if they’d kiss, fight, or fall asleep on each other. In any case, it was time to leave them alone.
Just as she rose to her feet, Amanda took Zack’s advice and changed the subject.
“I’m worried about Hannah.”
A sharp new panic gripped the actress, freezing her in place. Her inner self waved her on with flapping arms. Go! Leave! You don’t want to hear this!
“She’ll be all right,” Zack assured Amanda.
“You’ve only known her ten weeks. I’ve known her her whole life. I know what trauma does to her.”
“You’re looking down from the big sister perch.”
“I’m not looking down, just back. She has a history, Zack. It’s right there on her wrists.”
A storm of screams brewed in Hannah’s throat. She clenched her fists and vanished into the bathroom. The startled cat bolted down the stairs, past the chaise longue.
Amanda raised her head at the scurrying footsteps. “What was that?”
“Bad luck,” said Zack.
“Great. Like we need more.”
Amanda fixed a tense gaze at the sleeping-gas collar on the coffee table, a grim souvenir of her incarceration. Forty minutes ago, she asked Zack to reverse the lock, a task he’d initially refused out of fear of rifting her. She had to remind him that he was a man of minor miracles, able to rot a swinging banana from twenty feet away, grow keys out of keyholes, and turn old mice into young ones. He’d led an actress and two teenagers into battle with armed federal agents, and won.
Ultimately he’d indulged her, concentrating on her collar with the sweaty apprehension of a bomb defuser. The moment he popped the lock on her very last shackle, Amanda’s regard turned a hot new color and she fought the urge to kiss him. Now as she pressed against him, his heartbeat thumping against her breast, she wished she had her sister’s skill with men. She wished she could find just the right words to express her feelings, her qualms.
Then she considered that Zack was an artist. Maybe he didn’t need words.
Thin white strands of tempis slowly sprouted from her forearm, twisting around their locked hands like ivy. Zack leered with grinning marvel as small white leaves sprouted from the vines.
“Wow. Amanda, that’s beautiful. You ever do that before?”
“No.”
Her ropes wrapped tighter around them, driving the point home. The cartoonist aired a loud, somber breath.
“Guess we have a bit of a problem.”
“Guess we do,” she said.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” said Zack. “I spent four years in a bad entanglement.”
Amanda fixed a heavy stare at her naked ring finger. “Five and a half.”
“With everything going on, I’m not sure I can handle another one. I’m not saying it’s inevitable. Just possible. And after all the drama with Theo and Hannah . . .”
The tempic leaves withered. The vines retracted into Amanda’s skin. Zack checked her grim expression.
“I just pissed you off again, didn’t I?”
She shook her head. “No. I understand your hesitation. It’s smart.”
“Then why do I feel so stupid right now?”
“Because you know.”
“Know what?”
“That we don’t have much longer to live.”