The words screamed inside my head. This...whatever this was—flirting?—had to stop.
I dropped my arm and stepped back, only then noticing the silence inside the barn. Were the others watching, listening? My cheeks heated. “Look, I know you stayed friends with your other exes,” I said, “and if you want to be friends with me, fine. I’ll try. I just don’t want to play this game. Understood?”
He opened his mouth, closed it with a snap. Then he nodded resolutely.
I spun away from him before I did or said something worse, and stalked to the wall of weapons. Gavin was there, weighing a semiautomatic in his hand.
“Nice right cross, Als,” he said.
Finally. A cute nickname. Why did it have to come from him? “Thanks.” I lifted an ax.
He took it from me. “Sorry, honey, but if you want a big boy’s weapon, you’ll have to fight me for it. Spoiler alert—I’ll let you restrain me on the floor as long as you’re straddling my waist.”
I think my lips were curling at the corners. “I’m not straddling you,” I muttered, selecting another, lighter ax.
“Too bad.” He reached over and pressed a button on the bottom of my weapon. It was a lever of some sort and triggered metal spikes that popped out at the sides of the blade. “Do you know how to use this thing?”
“I have an arm, and I can swing. I figure that will do the trick.”
“If you don’t get yourself killed tonight, it’ll be because of a miracle,” he said. “Good thing my middle name is Miracle.”
“You’ve seen me fight. You know I’m good.”
“True.” He bumped my shoulder with his own. “So...have you ever thought about dyeing your hair punk-rocker-chick black? As I’m sure you’ve heard, I have a thing for brunettes and always avoid blondes.”
“I’ve heard. And no.”
“Too bad. Because you’re making me rethink my stance about not doing my friends’ exes.”
I snorted, not even trying to hide my...incredulity? Surely I wasn’t amused. “You’re making me rethink my stance against cold-blooded homicide.” I didn’t wait for his reply but marched away.
Laughing, he followed me. “Are you always this on edge?”
“I didn’t used to be, no.” I sighed. “Look, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” I tried to sit down in one of the cushioned chairs in the back of the room, but he caught my arm in a gentle vise and forced me to face him.
“First, you didn’t hurt my feelings. I doubt anyone could, considering the fact that I don’t actually have any. Second, I believe we have some unfinished business.”
I stared at his feet to avoid his gaze. Like Cole, he towered over me—which was not an easy feat. I had the legs of a giraffe.
“Cole assigned you to my team, and there’s no way we’ll be able to avoid each other. We can’t risk having a vision during a fight with the zombies.”
I nodded, but I still didn’t look at him.
He placed two fingers under my chin and forced my head to lift. “Let’s get this over with.”
No, no, no.... But I couldn’t avoid it, and our gazes locked. Annnd...nothing happened.
We both exhaled with relief.
“Well, that was certainly anticlimactic,” he muttered.
“The on-and-off thing is kind of annoying, isn’t it?” First with Cole, now Gavin.
“Maybe you need a tune-up.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll just pop into the supernatural ability repair shop sometime tomorrow.”
He grinned, his fingertips tracing the line of my jaw. A patented Cole Holland move. The contact unnerved me, and I turned away.
“Sit down,” Cole shouted. The harshness of his voice echoed off the walls.
I ignored him. It was either that, or tell him to suck it in a thousand different ways.
“Yeah, stop flirting. It sickens me,” Mackenzie said loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. She came up beside me and winked, and I realized she’d wanted Cole to hear, probably thinking he would erupt with jealousy.