Page 66 of Faking Forever
His entire demeanor seemed to thaw. The grim set of his mouth relaxed into a near smile.
Smith wasn’t like her father. Or Cade. Or Nox. Or even like her.
While he was becoming increasingly adept at hiding himself from her, all of the coldness and hostility was contrary to his character.
“You justhadto fracture your toe and take your overdue break in the smallest town on the planet, didn’t you?” Despite the words, there was something akin to affection in his voice.
One might even imagine he was inviting her to laugh along with him.
He’d often done that in that past. Tried to invite her into his warmth. With laughter. Quips.
That easygoing, relaxed nature of his had been so welcoming and tempting. But Kenny had refused to be drawn in, afraid that when he left, it would be one more thing forever lost to her.
So she’d deprived herself.
Withheld herself.
And lost him anyway.
This glimpse of that same inviting warmth was heartening. She was relieved to see that she hadn’t stripped him of it completely.
“Absurd, isn’t it?” she murmured, her own voice less rigid now. Melting a little around the edges. “Trustmeto make things difficult, right?”
The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he graced her with another one of those almost smiles.
“What form of communication were you thinking of? Letters? Calls? Emails?”
“I don’t know, Granddad. What about Morse code? Or maybe smoke signals?” she asked with a snort and a roll of her eyes.
Her acerbic comment startled a short, sharp bark of laughter from him and he looked shocked to hear the sound spilling from his lips.
“I’d forgotten—” He stopped speaking abruptly, as if suddenly remembering himself.
“Forgotten what?” she prompted gently, and he shifted uncomfortably. The chair creaked a little beneath his weight and once again she worried that it was too fragile to support him.
“I forgot how funny you can be,” he said after another moment’s hesitation. “We haven’t really had that much to laugh about over the last year and a half, have we?”
“No.” But they could have had.
There could—should—have been love and laughter and happiness.
What a horrible, horrible waste.
She instinctively reached across the table and at the last second, remembered herself. She curled her fingers into her palm, resting her fist on the cloth mere inches from the splayed fingers of his beautifully veined right hand.
“Let’s try not to…” She swallowed, eyebrows drawing together as she tried to find the right words. “Wallow in our regrets any more, Smith. Let’s try to set them aside just for right now. Do you—um—do you think we can do that? Maybe? Just for now. This moment?”
He did what she couldn’t and closed thedistance between their hands, the back of that long, beautiful index finger delicately brushing over the ridges of her knuckles.
That gentle touch sent gooseflesh skittering over her skin and she uncurled her fingers, until her own index finger, so much slimmer than his, slid along the length of his.
The contact—so tender and unexpectedly intimate—left her reeling.
His finger hooked around hers and they sat in silence for a few moments, heads bowed, with only their index fingers entwined in the middle of the table.
“No wallowing,” he agreed, in a voice that had sunk to a low rasp. “Just for now.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
