Page 37 of Break Me Open
“Not everything is about you,” I bite out.
“Isn’t it?” he asks lightly. “That’s not what your eyes say.”
“My eyes are fine. You’re the one who stares at people like they’re a puzzle you’re trying to take apart.” He hums, taking a few more steps closer. There’s just enough light to see his mouth now and the curve of his lip.
“How do you know what my eyes do?” he asks. “Have you been looking at me, Caiden?”
“I don’t look at you.” I snap.
He laughs quietly. “You are such a bad liar.”
“Do you follow all your allies into dark sheds, or am I just special?”
“You’re very special,” he says without missing a beat. “It’s... alarming.”
“That doesn’t even mean anything.”
“It means,” he says, taking another step, “that you keep walking away every time I get close enough to see what’s actually going on in that overworked brain of yours.”
“I walk away because you’re a menace,” I snap. “You don’t know when to stop.” He’s close enough now that I can see his eyes clearly, even in this shit light.
“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe you don’t know what to do with yourself when I keep going.”
“Fuck off,” I breathe out.
“Make me.” The words hang there between us, and something in me snaps.
My hand hits his chest, shoving him backwards. He takes a step back, more out of surprise than force. “What do you want from me?” I demand. My voice sounds raw even to my own ears. “You’ve been in my space since the briefing. You’re in my head when I’m trying to sleep. You get in my face every time I try to do my job, and then you act like I’m the crazy one for not enjoying it.”
He looks down at my hand that’s still flat against his chest, then back up. I can feel his heart racing under my fingers. “There it is,” he says softly.
“There what is?” I spit.
“Some honesty.” He says, leaning in slightly.
My hand ends up pushing harder into the muscle, but he doesn’t move away. If anything, he angles into it. “You want honesty?” I say. “Fine. I don’t know if I want to punch you in the throat or—” I cut myself off.
Shit.
“Or?” he prompts, smiling slowly, like I’ve handed him a present.
I grit my teeth. “Shut up.”
“Or... what, Caiden?”
Hearing my name in his mouth like that shreds something, and heat shoots down my back. I shove him again, harder. He hits the metal frame of another shelving unit with a dull clang, and a couple of helmets rattle in their nets above his head.
“You’re impossible,” I say.
“And you’re drunk,” he counters.
“I’m not that drunk.”
“You’re drunk enough that you stopped running,” he says. “You’d never let me get this close if you were fully in control.”
“You’re not close.”
He huffs, then he reaches out, grabs a fistful of my T-shirt at the chest, and yanks. I stumble forward into him and our bodies collide — his chest, my chest, hips, thighs, all points of contact, sudden and full.
