Chapter 10 The Foreshadowing #2
“No, I like it.” He pulls me closer by my arm, then takes a forkful of noodles and shoves it into his mouth. “I’m just not sure I like how much you like it.”
I watch him chew. The white shirt hangs open just enough to show a hint of his collarbone and the line of his throat when he swallows. His hair is as messy as ever, like he’s been running a hand through it all night. It makes my stomach twist. “I adore it, actually.”
He licks his lips, glistening with the noodles’ oil.
“There’s some serious imbalance here. But you’ll see, one day, really soon, you’ll like me about half as much as I like you.
And that day…” He huffs before he serves food onto my plate.
“That day will be exactly like today, except I’ll sleep better. ”
“Losing sleep over me, are you, Gray?”
“Hmm.” He nods firmly. “Not nearly as good as dreaming about you, Freckles.”
With a sense of contented giddiness coursing through me, I dig into my food.
Very inconvenient, isn’t it? How just having him around would make everything feel…
less daunting. I’ve been so worried over the fact that he just vanished that I haven’t let myself feel sad.
Now it’s hitting me all at once that I’ve truly missed him.
That I barely know him, but having him in my life fills me with a new type of energy I refuse to renounce.
It’s dangerous, and the hairs on my arms rise at the realization, but I can’t help it, and maybe I don’t want to, either. Maybe I want to like him half as much as he likes me.
“Heard about last night?” he asks, pointing his chopsticks at the window.
I immediately tense. There’s no part of me that wants to discuss this murder stuff with Rafael.
Celeste knows about the situation, and she’ll go to the police, so there’s nothing else I can do for now.
If I told him my theory and he didn’t believe me, that’d hurt more than I’d like to admit. “Yeah. Another murder.”
“Second in a week. Are you worried? ’Cause I can hang around.”
“I’m not. I mean, maybe a little.” I pick at the noodles on my plate. “They’re weird crimes, aren’t they?”
“Definitely.”
I fidget with the chopsticks, trying to act casual. “So what do you think is happening?”
“I’m not sure, but I think you’re about to tell me.”
I glance away. “No, I don’t know.”
“Really?”
He so knows I’m lying. “Really.”
“All right.” Looking past me, he stands, then walks to the kitchen counter where I abandoned my book earlier today. “Here. Part one of my extensive apology for my disappearance.”
“My own book?” I bring it to my chest and bat my lashes. “Why, thank you.”
“Dinner reading.” He mock-zips his lips. “Pretend I’m not even here.”
“What’s part two of your extensive apology?”
He hums, as if trying to speak even though his lips are glued together. With a shrug, he resumes eating again.
“You’re such an idiot,” I whisper under my breath. I turn around and hand him the remote, and once he accepts it, I open up the book.
I’m completely lost in a sequence of enemies-to-lovers banter when Rafael breaks through my concentration. I look up, wondering if it’s the first time he’s tried to call my name, and he lets out an exaggerated sigh of relief.
“Gee, Freckles. I thought you’d gone into some sort of coma.”
I grin. “Sorry. I dissociate from reality the way only a reader can.”
He watches me, amused. “So, did they? Have sex?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said, ‘They’re going to have sex.’ ”
I look down at my book, then back up at him. Did I say that out loud? “Oh. Michael and Franklin got a room, but there’s been a booking issue, and—”
“They have to sleep in the same bed.”
I nod. “But Michael has a big presentation tomorrow, so—”
“Franklin said he’ll take the floor?” He studies the cover. “I bet Michael answered that they’re adults—they can share a bed without making it weird. Turns out they couldn’t.”
“Did you read this?”
With a chuckle, he shakes his head. “You seem invested. Are my eyes betraying me, or is Scarlett Moore enjoying a romance book?”
“I wouldn’t alert the authorities just yet.” It’s certainly better than my first attempt but a far cry from entertaining. “I was exhausted from trying to rewrite the episode for Love on the Second Floor, so I’m giving this romance thing one last shot.”
I drop the book onto the table.
“I actually might have something to help with that.” He stands and walks to where he left his jacket. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I missed you. And since I had no way of contacting you, I did the next best thing.” Noticing my confused expression, he insists, “I read the book.”
“The Love Alibi?” I ask, thinking of the romance he bought at the store. “Did you like it?”
“I did,” he says. “Parts of it reminded me of you.”
Oh my God, this is giving me a bookish boner. He lets me read while we eat together, he wants to talk about books, and now this?
“Really? Like what?”
He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, his movement careful, almost stiff, then takes out a mangled, wrinkled version of that perfect paperback I saw three days ago. “Why don’t you find out yourself?”
I take the book, holding it between my hands like it might fall apart, my joy slightly dampened. “What did you do?” My heart squeezes for the bent pages and cracked spine. This is a murder. A literary murder, and not the good kind.
“I read it.”
“With an axe?” I quip.
“Er…” He looks down at the book. “Did I read it wrong?”
“Yes,” I say, nodding firmly. “You read it wrong.”
His expression softens, his eyes boring into mine. He says nothing, but holy shit, the things he says with his silence. He keeps looking at me that way, doesn’t he? With this intensity—like there’s nothing else worth looking at. It makes my skin prickle, and not only with nerves.
Still, he murdered this book.
“You’re not supposed to dog-ear the page.” I grab my pristine paperback, then show him the bookmark perched between the pages. “See? And look at the spine.” I flip the book around. “And don’t put it in your pocket. Now it’s all bent. You probably sat on it.”
I try to flatten the pages, to bend it back to normal. With that goofy smile, you’d think I would have the word adorable tattooed on my forehead. But I’m not adorable, I’m horrified.
“Got it?”
“Got it, Freckles. Whatever you say.”
I set the book back on my lap, grazing the front page. “So, you want me to read this?”
“Yes, if you want.” His hand approaches mine on the cover, but just as I think he might interlace his fingers with mine, he opens the book instead. “I wrote some notes for you.”
What?
I peer at the words scribbled over the edges and look up, mouth falling open. “You annotated it for me?”
“Yes. I figured since you love reading, which is an intrinsically lonely activity, maybe this would feel like doing it together.” His face scrunches, as if he’s doubting himself. “And hey, maybe it’ll help with your podcast.”
He annotated a book for me.
That is the sexiest, most romantic thing a man could ever do.
Forget about roses, gifts, trips. He wrote his most intimate thoughts for me to read. Thoughts about love, sex. He laid them all out and wants to share those bits of himself with me. It’s the most precious gift I’ve ever received.
“Thank you,” I say. “I mean, I don’t condone writing in books, but…”
“But you’ll do it for me?” he asks. “You’ll annotate a book you want me to read?”
He can’t possibly want that, can he? He must be saying what he thinks I want to hear. “You don’t have to ask that.”
“Scarlett, just assume that if I’m asking, it’s because I want it.” He holds up a fortune cookie. “Dessert?”
“Sure.” I’m full of all the amazing food, but I take it, then nudge the other toward him.
We both unwrap and snap the cookies at the same time. I pull out the tiny slip of paper and read mine out loud: “Don’t be trusting of the unexpected.”
Shit.
Our eyes meet, a heavy silence where we both know exactly what’s unspoken. “Damn. Even the cookie hates me.”
I laugh, biting into the cookie. “What does yours say?”
He glances at his paper, and as I pop the rest of the cookie into my mouth, he reads out, “If you’re lucky enough, the woman eating dinner with you won’t notice her towel is slipping, and it’ll just fall open.”
I look down, realizing my towel has slipped much lower on my chest than I’m remotely comfortable with. Heat rushes to my face as I yank it back up, my cheeks blazing, while he munches on his cookie. That knowing grin? Hot.
I narrow my eyes in mock annoyance. “Do you ever stop flirting?”
He shakes his head, thoughtful. “Oh, I wouldn’t call that flirting.”
“What would you call it, then?”
He pauses as if considering. “Wishful thinking.”
I try not to laugh. I fail. He does, too, and it’s worrying how much I like the sound of it. Warm and deep, and like music to my ears, making every note reverberate through my body and sending shivers down my spine.
“You know what? I’ll stop flirting as soon as it doesn’t make you smile like that.”
Goddamn it.
I force myself to exhale and push past the swirling mix of nerves and…
something else bubbling under the surface.
Standing, I grab a stack of plates to clear the table.
We move around the kitchen in sync, quiet except for the clinking of dishes, in a silence that feels charged yet strangely comforting at the same time.
As he reaches for a higher shelf, his shirt shifts, revealing a flash of white gauze taped to his upper right arm. My brow furrows. “What happened there?”
He freezes, just for a second, before tugging his shirt back down in one swift motion. “It’s nothing. Just a scratch.”
I arch a brow. “A scratch my Sherlock might be responsible for?”
He chuckles, but it’s thinner than usual, the humor not quite reaching his eyes. “Sherlock was a perfect cat. If you ignore the hissing. And the kicking.”
I snort, shaking my head. Still, something about the way he brushes it off feels weird. But before I can press further, he’s already turned his attention back to the sink, scrubbing at a plate with unnecessary vigor.
When I go back for the boxes of food, I see the fortune cookie note on his side of the table. Curiosity gets the better of me, and I pick it up, reading the small print: The love of your life is right in front of your eyes.
My stomach flips, and the noise of the kitchen fades into the background. When I glance back at him, his focus is on the sink, but there’s something in the way his shoulders are set—tense, almost guarded. And just like that, the warmth twists into something harder.
Vanessa’s words echo in my mind.
Quentin stabbed the killer in his arm.
I look back at Rafael, brows furrowing.
Just a coincidence, I’m sure.