Page 131 of The ARC Unit: Breach
“Because you want to talk about it.”
I gave him a flat look he did not bother returning. “You started that conversation.”
“You made the comment about the webbing.”
“I made a joke.”
“About my sex life?”
“I said, if that’s what you’re into. You were the one who leaned over and told me I couldn’t handle whatever twisted little private life you have.”
His thumb moved once against the steering wheel. “Twisted.”
“Sorry if your word choice invites interpretation.”
“That wasn’t my word.”
“You know what I mean.”
He stayed quiet.
I sat back against the seat and looked through the windshield. The rain that had followed us out of Stuttgart had thinned to a mist, leaving the road dark and reflective while traffic moved in long clean stretches ahead of us. I could have let the conversation die there and saved myself whatever embarrassment was waiting on the other side of it.
Instead, I heard myself ask, “So what are you into?”
Wolf finally looked at me, and only then did I register that I had just asked my masked commanding officer to explain his sexual preferences while he drove us across southern Germany.
“You’re actually asking me that,” he said.
“You told me I couldn’t handle it. I would like to know what I’m supposedly incapable of handling.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like people deciding things about me when they don’t know me.”
“I know you.”
“You probably know what I drink in the morning and that I argue with you. That’s not the same thing.”
“You also don’t stop when you should.”
“That goes in the category of arguing with you.”
He let the road fill the silence for a few seconds before saying, “What are you into?”
I turned toward him. “That’s not how answering works.”
“You want to know what I based the assumption on.”
“Yes.”
“Then give me something better to base it on.”
The answer was irritatingly reasonable, which made refusing feel more childish than I wanted it to. I tucked a loose section of hair behind my ear and tried to make the question less ridiculous by treating it like one I would answer for anyone else.
“Normal things.”
Wolf kept driving without offering anything else, which only made the silence feel more deliberate. I waited for him to respond. He did not.
