Page 163 of Reckless
The breath left me slowly.
“That,” I said, voice softer now, “is a very unfair answer.”
“It’s also true.”
I looked down because I felt too open under the candlelight.Too seen.
And because if he had told me Pictionary and the zoo, then I owed him the truth too.
“The first moment for me,” I said, “was probably before I wanted it to be.”
He watched me closely now.
I smiled a little at my own wine glass.“I think I started liking you the first time you looked at me like my mouth was as reckless as the rest of me.”
I kept going because bravery tonight in ways that had become hard to stop once I started.
“And the one I couldn’t argue with ” I looked up.“When you poured my tea at breakfast at your parents.”
His brows lifted slightly.“That seems new.”
“I had built up everything before that as a crush.”I shook my head.“And I was not going to pursue.”I leaned one elbow on the table.“But then you go and do something that seems so caring and made me feel like I belonged.”
We finished dessert slowly, neither of us rushing the end of the night because the end would force movement and movement meant choices and choices meant eventually going back to a world with rooms and other people and ordinary time in it.
Still, eventually he paid, quietly, and we stepped back out into the evening.
We walked instead of going straight to the car.His hand found mine halfway to the water without discussion.
I wanted the world to see we were an us and that thought stopped me cold.
Xerses looked over immediately.“What.”
I smiled at him in the harbor light.“I was thinking that I like being seen with you now.”
His expression shifted.Deepened.“How now.”
I looked out toward the water, then back at him.“Before, it felt like an accident.Like something reckless and impossible and maybe a little humiliating because everyone else could see it before I wanted to admit it.”I lifted one shoulder.“Now it feels like a choice.”
He held my gaze.“Good.”
I laughed softly.“You are committed to that word.”
“Yes.”
“I’m starting to think you use it instead of saying other things.”
That got his attention in full.
He stopped walking completely.
The harbor lights moved behind him.Reflected in his eyes a little.The wind lifted the hair off my shoulders and sent it across my mouth.
He reached up and tucked it back with the backs of his fingers.Slow and ruinous.
“You’re right,” he said.
I went still.“What things.”
