provisional circumstances - chapter 5
" “Why are you getting mad at me for something you brought up?” Damen said. “I have never said I wanted anything from you.”
“You mean to say you agreed to go through all of this—a legal trial, through fucking marriage—for free? That there's nothing in it for you?”
“ Bullshit, ” Laurent repeated, firmly.
“You’re the one who’s been asking for favors since the moment we first met, not me.” Laurent reacted the same way he did the day Damen slapped him. Damen tried to fix it, “And I’m fine with that,” he said. “I’m glad to help whenever I can. I just can’t understand why you would assume I want to take advantage of you when I’ve done nothing to allude to that. Ever.”
Laurent’s entire face twisted. “Why?” He said it like it irked him somehow. “How can you agree to something like this and expect nothing in return?”
“I don’t know.“ Damen frowned back at him. “It’s what friends do?”
Laurent went very still. “Friends?”
“Yes?” It took Damen no small amount of effort to say it.
“We are not—” Laurent began and cut himself off. “We—” he tried again, equally unsuccessful. “I’m—”
Laurent took a step back, heedful of Damen. Damen sustained it. The silence stretched.
Finally, after setting a long discussion he obviously had in his own mind, Laurent said, “You are remarkably stupid.”
“You are an idiot,” he said, stepping away. From a good distance, he turned and shouted, “Are you coming or not?” "