Page 102 of Sugar & Shadows

I blinked a few times, my brain not clear enough yet to comprehend her words. “What did I do again?”

With a cry like a banshee, she smacked my shoulder. “Wrong answer.”

Ducking, I reached around her and pushed the door shut before she could wake up the neighbors. The last thing I needed was the police showing up. Nolan would give me so much shit.

“I briefly let my guard down,” she shouted, pacing away from me. “I trusted you to be a reasonable, low-risk human being. Instead—” She whipped around and shook her fist. “You’re a biological liability. I’ve toppled governments, Gabe. Governments. And yet, here I am, taken out by your…” She shook her head, her lips curling in disgust. “Your maple syrup fertility voodoo.”

As if she was reenacting a fight scene from a movie, she lunged for me.

“Prepare to die.”

I caught her wrist—by instinct, not force—stopping her attack. Damn, she was strong. And really beautiful. She looked different today. Her hair was down and flowing wildly. She had on no makeup, and she was wearing pajamas with monkeys on them. Also, the way she was yelling at me and hitting me was kind of… hot?

Shit, Josh was right. I really did need intensive therapy.

She shoved me again, but I didn’t move. She wasn’t trying to hurt me, just prove a point. One I didn’t yet understand. But I didn’t hate having her hands on my bare chest.

She was furious. Enraged. And she’d never looked more beautiful.

“Sabrina,” I said gently.

“Don’t say my name like that. You don’t get to be the calm one here.”

“It’s obvious that you aren’t the calm one, so maybe I should be?”

I bit my lip to keep from smiling. The effort was in vain.

Her eyes widened in horror. “Don’t you fucking smile.”

“I’m not⁠—”

“You are.” She scoffed. “You are such an asshole.”

At this point, it was getting difficult to hold back a laugh. “I’m trying not to,” I said. “But you’re in my house screaming and hitting me, and it’s kind of funny.”

She went deathly still, like a predator about to pounce.

I considered running and finding a place to hide.

“This is not funny.” Her voice was low and serious. “This is the result of a catastrophic failure of multiple systems, including but not limited to modern science, medical devices, my common sense, and your apparently superhuman fertility.”

“My what?” I frowned, my brain spinning. Fertility? What was she talking about?

She growled. It was hot, yes, but it didn’t answer my question.

“You heard me,” she spat. “I should have known. It’s the trees up here. Or maybe all the syrup.”

I ran my hands through my hair, grasping for an appropriate response. One wrong word, and she might actually kill me. But I was still lost, so I kept my mouth shut.

“No one can tame chaos like I can,” she ranted. “I’ve dismantled scandals, engineered coups, and curated outcomes with precision.”

She sucked in a deep breath, her chest inflating, her face red.

“Except”—she poked me hard in the chest—“you. You are a kind of chaos I cannot control.”

None of this made any sense. I couldn’t for the life of me decipher her tirade. She wasn’t calm enough to give me answers, and yet I needed her to break it down for me.

“Sabrina,” I said slowly, softly. “I still don’t understand.”