He walked out Amanda's patio door, a collapsing feeling in his chest like he'd been sucker punched.

"I don't believe this." he muttered to himself.

He knew enough about human nature to understand that Amanda's threat to resign from the Agency had been launched as an attack in a bigger battle that was waging silently between the two of them. In the quest to make him feel anything at all, she had invited his anger and cruelty as broken substitutes for other, less ready emotions.

She'd wanted to wound him, with her words and her eyes made of fire, but she'd miscalculated. No weapon she possessed could break a heart if it was already made of stone. She was only going to hurt herself.

He made it to the door of his parked car, but no further. Her words lay heavy upon his spine, paralyzing him. He was so angry with her he wanted to smash the sky. How dare she threaten to leave him, when he had so assiduously tried to keep her far away? How dare she call his bluff? Simmering below the blistering layer of fury, however, he was paradoxically proud of her. Her refusal to let him manipulate and belittle her raised his already considerable esteem for her good sense.

"Time to kiss my ass goodbye, huh, Amanda?" he spoke to the empty street, finally unlocking his car and driving away without a backwards glance.

As the miles to his apartment passed, his anger cooled and the raw hurt that lay below it emerged. Probing at the sensation like a loose tooth, he tried to locate the source of his pain. Their argument was a symptom, but not the cause. The real issue had been growing between them with each passing day that she wound her way into his life like mist.

His heart was a crowded room where no-one else was supposed to go. It was an all or nothing proposition, the two-way mirror that he'd built around himself, and he didn't know how to let Amanda in without it shattering. He was hard as a bone, brittle and prone to break like a winter branch.

A sudden certainty came over him. His last chance was passing him by. And the only way he could halt its progress while he considered what to do was to set things right with Amanda.

The Corvette turned a tight one eighty into the setting sun, heading back towards Arlington.