Page 96 of Reckless
The hallways were dimmer now.Lamps instead of chandelier light.The distant murmur of voices came from the far wing where Charlie and Hope had likely trapped half the house into a game.Somewhere below me, someone laughed, Miley maybe.Or Isabel.Hard to tell from that far.
I went slowly and noticed the sound of the ocean getting louder with every step.
The cove was empty.As I stepped, I heard the crunch of steps in sand behind me and knew.
Xerses was here.The air changed.I looked out at the ocean and said, “I’m starting to think you have me followed.”
The footsteps stopped.
Then his voice came through the dark, lower here than anywhere else, roughened by wind and distance and that there was no one to hear it but me.“I came down for air.”
“At midnight.”
“Yes.”
“To the exact cove where I happen to be sitting.”
“Coincidence.”
“That is not a coincidence.That is surveillance.”
“That is a strong word you can’t prove.”
“It’s the right word.”
“You give me too much credit.”
“I give you exactly the right amount of credit and you know it.”
The moon put enough light on him when I finally looked back that the shape of him properly.Dark shirt again.No jacket.Hands in his pockets.Barefoot.
Something about the stripped-down simplicity of it, Xerses Norouzi, wealthy and polished and infuriatingly controlled, standing in the sand with no shoes on, did mean things to my body my brain had not cleared with legal.
He was within the small, charged circle the cove had become.
“I needed quiet,” I said.
“I get it.”
That immediate answer got to me more than it should have.
“Why do you keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
I shook my head.“Not everything needs to be something you understand.”
“No.”
I was noticing his feet.“There are more words in a sentence than one.”
The laugh that escaped me was real before I could stop it and some of the pressure in my chest loosened.
He stayed where he was.
No reaching for me.No assuming the invitation of proximity just because I hadn’t ordered him away.The restraint from my apartment the night before, alive again here in the dark.
It also made me want him more.
