Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3)(23)

“No, ” I growl. I know it’s a growl because that’s what Baz calls it when I sound like this. I grab him by the front of his shirt. “I didn’t come here to say I’m sorry—I came to tell you that you were right!”

He didn’t even flinch when I grabbed him. He’s sneering down at me like I’m miles beneath him.

“Of course I was,” he says.

He shoves me back and slams the door in my face.

BAZ

I let my forehead fall against the door. I’m panting. Maybe I’m hyperventilating. I haven’t had enough food, water, or blood for this. I can’t get enough air.

Simon came to see me.

After saying he hated the sight of me.

Simon came to say he was sorry.

(Which really is worthless. And more about making him feel better than making me feel anything. And fuck him if he thinks—) He came to tell me I was right …

I open the door again. He’s still standing there.

“What was I right about?” I demand. “And you better make this clear and to the point, for once in your magic-forsaken life.”

Simon looks tired. He’s wearing baggy jeans and a Watford hoodie and someone has spelled his wings invisible—or maybe they’re already gone.

He pushes his shoulders back and points that square chin at me. “You were right, Baz. I never tried.”

SIMON

Baz doesn’t say anything.

I meet his grey eyes. As hard as it is. As hard as they are. As much as I feel like I don’t have the right.

“I’ve just been waiting for you to get tired of me,” I say. “Since the day I lost my magic. Before that, even. I never thought—” I shake my head. “I never really thought this would work.”

Baz is shaking his head, too, just slightly, like he’s quietly rejecting every word. “I thought you’d go down fighting if you believed in something…”

He’s right, he’s always right. I look him in the eye. “I never believed in us.”

BAZ

I didn’t think there was anything left that Simon could say to hurt me …

I was wrong.

I laugh and wipe my eyes. “Seven snakes,” I say. “What a thing to hear.

Fuck, Snow…” I bring my arm up and laugh into my elbow, sobbing.

Simon’s mouth is hanging open. “No,” he says. “I mean…” He reaches out a hand but doesn’t touch me. “What I mean is, as soon as I turned against the Mage, I left the map. It was like I walked right out of the story everyone had been telling about me. I started losing, and I didn’t stop. You felt like something I grabbed on my way down—but I never believed I’d get to keep you. I didn’t get to keep anything … What did I get to keep, Baz?”

Simon is crying, too, but he doesn’t wipe his tears. Just licks away the ones that hit his lips.

“I didn’t try,” he says, “because I thought it would be worse if I tried. I told myself to enjoy it— you—while I could. But that didn’t work. It felt like eighth year again, waiting for the Humdrum to attack. The waiting … I’m not good at waiting.”

I rub my nose against my sleeve. I nod. I know.

“I just wanted to, like, make it happen, ” he says. “To like, charge into it and get it over with. Whenever we were together, I just wanted to get it all over with.”

I laugh again. The hits keep coming.

Simon shoves his hand up into the front of his hair and pulls. “Stop, ” he says. “I know how that sounds. That’s not how I mean it!”

“No.” I shake my head. “I know. I know how you mean it. It still hurts.”

He looks in my eyes. He’s hardly looked away. “Baz”—his voice is small —“do you think it would have been different if I’d tried?”

SIMON

He doesn’t answer me. I shouldn’t have come here. Nothing I’ve said changes anything, I was a berk to think it would— But I haven’t been able to get it out of my head, what he said. That he was the first thing I ever gave up on. He’s right. I didn’t give up on Agatha—I waited until she gave up on me. I fought whatever the Humdrum threw at me.

I did whatever the Mage asked of me. I gave myself wings because I couldn’t stop fighting.

Why haven’t I ever fought for Baz?

What would happen if I did?

Baz takes a step back, into the living room. His hand is on the door. And he’s looking at me the way he did in my flat last night, like I’ve got a knife in his heart, and I’m holding it there.

Then his head falls forward a bit, and he tilts it away from me. “Come on,” he says softly. “Come in.”

BAZ

Snow doesn’t move.

I back out of his way. “Come on. We don’t have to do this in the hall.”

He steps over the threshold and seems to wait for me to change my mind. I close the door behind him, so he has to come all the way in. (I still might change my mind, I don’t know.) Then I sit at one end of the sofa and wave my hand at the other end.

He hesitates some more, still standing with his feet apart and his shoulders back. Battle mode.

When I clear my throat, he finally moves—taking the spot on the far end of the sofa and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. (He’s moving stiffly. I wonder if he’s sore. I wonder if Dr. Wellbelove took his tail as well.) He scrubs at the caramel-coloured curls at the top of his head. They already look thoroughly scrubbed.