Page 36 of Sparrow

The men are almost all gathered around one specific bike, and though it doesn’t look like anything special to me, something must be wrong with it. Ten different men are staring at it like it’s insulted their mother and then presented a riddle they don’t understand, and more than one of them is wringing his hands or pushing his fingers through his hair.

Mars takes exactly half a second to desert me, all the shared laughter of the last two hours forgotten between one step and the next.

I watch him run from me, my heart growing colder with each step he takes, and then shake my head.

Typical.

I might have thought we were sharing something special, that we were actually making space for each other, but the moment someone else needs him, he’s forgetting me as if I never existed.

“Should have seen that coming,” I whisper, angry at myself. Because of course he has other things to take care of. Of course something else is more important than the random stray girl he had the misfortune to rescue in the middle of a cool spring night.

Haven’t I been telling myself that for the last two days?

And I thought I was believing it. But the crack through my heart at his sudden absence tells me otherwise.

I was taking him at face value rather than remembering that everyone has an ulterior motive. Even Mars Hawke.

I turn toward the house, the bags on my arms suddenly feeling like disappointment and loneliness, and realize that the bike hasn’t cornered everyone’s attention the way it did Mars.

Orion is bent over under the hood of an old, bright red truck, and I can hear him muttering to himself from here. I don’t know if he hasn’t seen the bike or if he just doesn’t care, but given what I know of him, I’m guessing the latter.

He strikes me as the kind of man who ignores something other men are drooling over, just to be contrary. He further strikes me as the kind of man who will make fun of every other man for being predictable and boring because they all like the same thing, while he’s walking his own path and threatening anyone who tries to steer him back to the mainstream.

I have to admit that I respect him for that.

Not everyone is brave enough to be an individual in a world full of sheep.

He suddenly looks up at me like he heard me have that thought and is deeply insulted about it, his brows drawn down and his eyes annoyed. He holds out a hand and gestures that it requires something, and then increases the intensity of his glare.

“Are you going to help? Or are you just going to stand their looking pretty?”

The questions strike me in a way I don’t expect and I freeze, horrified at having been caught staring–and at being asked to help.

I hate it when people notice me and ask me to help them do something. It immediately puts pressure on me, and I don’t perform well under pressure.

There’s too much possibility of disappointing someone, and paying the price for it.

“Arden!” he snaps. “Get me the wrench off that cart!”

I jump at the command in his voice, drop my bags, and scurry toward the cart he’s just indicated. I have no idea what a wrench looks like, but I grab the first tool I can find and hand it to him.

He glances at the thing in his hand and then turns his gaze to me, looking like he wonders if I suddenly lost my mind.

“The wrench,” he says again.

“Oh the wrench,” I mutter. “Obviously. My mistake. So sorry.”

I grab another tool and hand it to him, and once again I’ve guessed wrong. This time, he doesn’t even bother asking again. He stalks over, grabs what I assume is actually the wrench, and glares at me. When he holds the tool up in front of my face and shakes it, I can’t decide if I want to punch him or laugh.

“Wrench,” he snaps. “The wrench.”

“Wrench,” I mimic, turning the word into a sneer. Look, I can’t help it. He saw right through me this morning, then disappeared the moment he realized what he’d done, and now he’s standing here lecturing me with one word and making me feel about three inches tall.

It’s fucking annoying.

He pauses at my tone and looks like I did just punch him and he didn’t see it coming. His dark, handsome features go completely blank and I have a moment to just stare at him and take him in. His hair is longer than it should be, framing his face and falling down his neck, and it’s got a slight curl to it, like it’s long enough that it’s starting to have a mind of his own. His eyes are almond-shaped and dark but still manage to show me everything he’s thinking, and when his mouth twists it brings his dimples out sharply.

I wonder if he hates those dimples.