"How does that work? What are the limitations? How would... that someone... find... someone else at... exactly the right time? How would he.."
"Or she," Fredward winked.
"Or she. How would he or she... find someone else at exactly the right time? How would he or she know that he or she was about to be gang raped in Fort Angles?"
"Hypothetically?" he asked.
"Sure." I squealed, thrilled that he was still playing along. It was becoming quite the game.
"Well, if... that someone... "
"Let's call him Rob Pattinson." I suggested.
Fredward smiled wryly. "Robert Pattinson, then. If Robert Pattinson had been paying attention, the timing wouldn't have needed to have been quite so exact."
"Hypothetically... ?" I teased.
He suddenly looked irritated. "Only you could get into trouble in a town this small. You would have devastated their crime rate statistics for a decade, you know. If you had let yourself get raped multiple times back there."
Was this turning into the blame game? "We were speaking of a hypothetical case," I reminded him frostily.
He laughed at me, his eyes warming.
"Yes, we were," he agreed. "Shall we call you 'La Bella Italia'?"
"How did you know?" I asked, unable to curb my intensity. I realized I was leaning toward him again and drooling quite a bit into the remaining glass of Coke.
He seemed to be wavering, torn by some internal dilemma. His eyes locked up my eyes in a heavenly prison, and I guessed he was making the decision right then whether or not to simply tell me the truth.
"You can trust me, you know," I murmured, trying to be casual. I reached forward, without thinking, to touch his enormous folded hands, but he slid them away minutely,198 and I pulled my hand back.
"I don't know if I have a choice anymore." His voice was almost a whisper. "I was wrong—you're so much more observant than I gave you credit for. You knew the Rob Pattinson of our hypothetical conversation was... "
"You?" I asked, sweetly. This was the first time I had been able to complete one of his sentences, and it felt so good.
198. In a tiny fashion.