Page 70 of The Midnight Frequency

“Really? A woman can’t hold an umbrella for you? That’s kind of sexist.”

“I’ve been alive a great many years, Maggie. Any misconceptions I might have had in my human life about women not having every capability a man does have long since remedied themselves. Your ability to hold the umbrella is not the issue. My desire to do so is.”

“Because you’re the man.”

“Yes.” He practically sighed out the word. “But can we just accept that I wish to do so out of good manners and not because of some absurd belief that it makes me less of a man for you to?”

I let my hand slide from the handle.

“I actually kind of like a lot of your old-fashioned manners.”

“So you just enjoy being argumentative just for the sake of it.”

“I actually hate arguing.”

“Just with me then?” he asked.

I could feel his gaze on my profile but forced my own to stay forward. I was worried if I looked at him right then, I might confess it all. The calls, my book, my plans to keep calling in until I completed the last chapter because he had, whether I understood it or not, become my muse.

“I guess so.”

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted.”

“I don’t mind arguing with you because… because it doesn’t feel like arguing. It doesn’t have those stakes and costs. It feels more like, I don’t know, like we’re trying to understand each other, not just snap each other’s heads off.”

Silas stopped walking, his gaze intense as he looked down at me.

This time, it was my gaze that triangulated from his gaze to his lips. With his superhuman speed, there was no way he didn’t notice.

My pulse thrummed, a fluttering sensation in my neck, my chest, my wrists.

The flames I felt licking up my arm from his touch were back, stronger, coursing up my shoulder, down my chest, my stomach, settling lower.

Seconds passed.

Minutes.

Hours.

I had no idea.

Time seemed to contract and expand all at once.

When Silas’s hand lifted, it seemed to go in slow motion, hanging in the air for an impossibly long time before reaching out, his fingertips whisper-soft against my cheek as he tucked my hair behind my ear.

Was the shiver from the rain, his cool skin, the heat it somehow left in its wake, or all three? I had no idea. But I saw the moment of recognition in his storm-blue eyes.

The world narrowed to that moment.

To him.

My breath was caught as anticipation sizzled across my skin.

Just when I thought he might lean down, seal his lips to mine, his face changed.

It all happened so fast.

One second, we were looking at each other, lost in the spell between us.