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Rover half dragged me forward even while I struggled to hold him back.
    Mark glanced up, but when he saw it was me, he returned to his task at hand, indifferent to me. My intention had been to walk directly past him without a word and get inside the house without a display of emotion.
    The silent treatment was what he deserved. If I could pretend I didn’t care, maybe he’d feel the need to explain himself. Okay, admittedly, my thinking was probably skewed, but I was starting to feel desperate and lost. I had to believe there was some logical explanation for Mark’s behavior, something he wasn’t telling or couldn’t tell me.
    I wasn’t halfway onto the property when, against all reason, my mouth took over. “You couldn’t wait, could you?” I demanded, so angry that I barely sounded like myself.
    Mark paused, turned around, and looked at me. He frowned as if he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. “Wait? For what?”
    “To list your house.” My anger was front and center and seemed to throb with every syllable.
    “What’s the big deal? I told you I was moving on.”
    “You had to rub it in…you couldn’t put it off until you were sure this was what you wanted, could you?” My anger was to the point that I had trouble speaking coherently.
    He set aside his paintbrush and turned to face me directly. “There was no reason to wait. The decision to leave has been made, so I listed the house.”
    “You didn’t tell me.”
    “Why should I?” he snapped.
    “You’re right,” I shot back, unbelievably hurt. “Why should you? Our…friendship, our relationship, means nothing to you. Why would you want to share anything with me?”
    He appeared perplexed by my outburst, which said everything. He hadn’t given my feelings the least bit of consideration. Any hope I’d clung to that he would change his mind dissolved like ice in boiling water.
    He braced one hand against his hip. “I don’t get why you’re so angry.”
    I couldn’t explain it myself. I felt the compelling urge to lash out and hurt him in the same way I was hurting. “I should have known I couldn’t depend on you. You’re doing what you’ve always done. You’re running away. So run. Be a coward. If friends, if relationships, if love is more than you can deal with, then good riddance.”
    We squared off face-to-face. His face was red with anger and I felt the heat radiate off my own. My hands were bunched into tight fists at my sides, my nails digging hard enough into the skin of my palms to leave indentations.
    His eyes narrowed and hardened. “I don’t owe you any explanations. I’m my own person.”
    “Fine, be your own person. You don’t need anyone; you’re an island, an entity unto yourself. That’s great. Perfect, in fact. Have a good life, because I don’t need you, either.”
    Rover howled, but I ignored him and so did Mark.
    “What I do or don’t do is my own business,” he reminded me. “If I choose to put my house on the market, then it’s none of your concern, got it?”
    Oh yes, I got it. “Loud and clear.”
    Neither one of us moved. The leash wrapped around my hand bit painfully into my flesh, cutting off the blood supply to my fingers. I ignored the discomfort.
    “You’re not my mother, or even my sister,” he said between gritted teeth.
    He’d never mentioned either his mother or a sister before, which served only to punctuate how little I knew about him. I’d wanted to introduce Mark to my family and he’d refused. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he chose to ignore his own relatives, if indeed he had family. Nor should I be shocked that I meant little or nothing to him. People flowed through his life like creek water, never standing still for long.
    “In other words, I’m nothing to you. Absolutely nothing.”
    He blinked, as if my accusation hit too close to the truth. “If that’s the way you want to look at it, then go right ahead.”
    It irritated me that he had the ability