Chapter Thirty-Two
LOLA
“You’ve improved,” Nic says ten minutes later as I nail the drop I’ve been finessing for weeks.
“Thank you,” I say breathlessly, dismounting and gripping the hoop to keep it from hitting me in the head. “I’ve been practicing.”
“Clearly.”
Now’s my best shot. I cock my head, hoping he doesn’t see right through me. “Would you dance with me?”
His expression is impassive. Careful. “Why would I do that?”
“So your body can tell me truths your mouth keeps locked away,” I say, mimicking his deep voice in an echo of what he said when he asked me to dance during the tournament. “Or some such nonsense.”
A chuckle rumbles in his chest, a smile creeping to his mouth in spite of himself. “Such a vexing little creature,” he says, kicking off his shoes and tossing aside his fedora.
“Wasn’t it ‘confounding?’” I tap my chin. “No, ‘tempting,’ I think it was.”
“Perhaps you should check a thesaurus.”
The casual jab, the teasing glint in his eye . . . I can almost grasp the Nic I know, almost see him, but his irises still glow that cold shade of violet. Distant and careful. Like this is a dance he’s scared to flounder.
Stars, how can a voice feel so achingly familiar and yet so utterly foreign at the same time? How can that longing in my heart hurt more than it already does?
I swallow the lump in my throat as he shrugs out of his jacket. Draping it on a nearby chair and rolling up his sleeves, he turns to face me in his dress shirt and vest tucked into midnight black slacks. His snake-eye ring glimmers as he holds out his hands. “Shall we?”
“I’m just waiting for you, your royal Liar-ness,” I say, voice thick.
If he notices, he does not act like it. Instead, he approaches the hoop. “Mirroring each other?”
I shrug. “You’re the expert. I’ve never been on a hoop with someone else before, unless you count that one time with you.”
“Turn the hoop to the right and hook your right knee on three. Ready?”
I nod, trying to ignore the way my heart flutters when he meets my eye.
“One . . . ,” he says. “Two . . . three.”
The hoop sets to spinning, and we both swing our right legs over in tandem, our left legs pointing past each other.
“Crescent roll up,” he instructs. “And . . . go.”
I cannot help it. As we move from pose to pose, our bodies synchronizing like we’ve done this a thousand times, a smile creeps onto my mouth.
And though this isn’t the Nic I knew—it is, in some ways.
The quirk of his brow. The grip of his hand on my waist when we hang by our knees side by side. The gentleness of his laugh.
He’s in there. The longer we dance, the faster we spin, the heavier our breathing becomes, the stronger his presence. Soon, his fingers trace along the curve of my lower back, and mirth glimmers in his smile when I tease him about his unnatural flexibility.
Though I’m still a novice on the hoop, our bodies sync as they did on the dance floor during his tournament. The world falls away, and the apparatus twirls. His eyes lock on mine like a specter surfacing from a frozen lake.
But there’s a struggle. Like he’s clawing for purchase as something else—fear?
caution?—holds him at bay. So when he swings into a seated position at the center of the hoop, I grit my teeth and climb into his lap, legs straddling his hips so my feet hang off behind him.
I place my hands next to his, gripping the hoop over our heads.
“You haven’t been back to your casino,” I say. “Why?”
“How would you know that?” he asks, a vein pulsing in his temple a sure sign of the battle raging within him. I just wish I knew what it was. “Are you guilty of breaking and entering? That’s a crime, you know.”
“Almost every day,” I reply, keeping my jaw steady as my stomach ties itself in knots.
“Why?”
A flush rises in my neck, heat speckling my cheeks in what I’m sure is a very obvious blush, but I do not drop his gaze, do not even blink. If I want to break through whatever is keeping him trapped, I need to be vulnerable, even if it might hurt.
I take a deep breath. “To remember.”
It isn’t a lie. I may have told myself I kept returning to hide from Enzo, to practice my magic, to get uninterrupted time to learn aerial hoop, but all along, that has never been the real reason.
No, I kept returning to his casino because out in the city, in the Brig, or on the beach, what happened during the tournament always felt like it might have been a dream. An illusion. Another lie.
But at the Liar’s Den, the world hushed away, and Nic was everywhere. Echoes of his showman’s voice lived in the walls, the whiskey and cinnamon scent of him slumbered in the air, his breath brushed feather-soft against my neck in the faint breezes whistling through the balcony doors.
“Ah.” He regards me knowingly. That expression might have angered me yesterday before I caught that glimpse of him at the telescope, but not now.
Instead, sadness softens the bite of my pain. Not for myself, missing him, wishing he would return, but for him. The young man who has spent his whole life trapped.
So I lick my lips and forge on, speaking not to the magic icing from those eyes, but to the imprisoned young man inside.
“You know you were the first person in my life to be completely honest with me?” I say. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Was I, though?” he murmurs. “Or did I just tell you what you wanted to hear?”
“Whoever your magic is forcing you to be might lie to me, but it isn’t you. Not wholly.”
His lips purse, and it takes all my willpower to not look at those lips, all my focus to not remember what they felt like against the hollow of my throat.
“Perhaps it is, little thief.”
“Don’t call me that,” I blurt before I can stop myself.
He cocks his head, raising an eyebrow. “You seemed to like it before.”
“Yes, well . . . You were different before.” I shiver, though it’s not cold. I’m so close, my words striking something in him, but they still aren’t enough.
I have to do more. Break through whatever is keeping the real him captive.
I release the hoop, shifting to wrap my arms around his neck. “I have a question. A request.”
“Ask away.”
“You said what happened between us during the tournament was a lie, but . . . it wasn’t for me,” I admit on a whisper. “It was real. And I . . . I miss it.”
Warmth floods his eyes for an instant, but then the icy light reclaims it. “Say it, darling.”
“Would you pretend for a moment that you’re still the Nic I thought I knew?” My voice comes out barely a breath, my heart gargling in my throat, my cheeks burning.
His eyes narrow. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
I thread my fingers into his hair. “Kiss me.”
He blinks once. “You want me to kiss you?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve decided on a life of celibacy,” I tease, tugging on his hair in the way that drew groans from deep inside him the last time we were this close. “You certainly were convincing in the elevator that day.”
He grins. “Oh, you won’t hear me complaining. It just doesn’t seem like something you would want—to be kissed by a liar.”
I duck close enough for him to taste my breath. “You said yourself humans like to be deceived.”
“You never liked it when I lied,” he says, mouth skating against mine. “You used to yell at me all the time about it, remember?”
“Candor or con?” I twist my ankles behind him, cinching myself flush against his torso.
A spasm rolls through him at the contact. “What if I pick candor?” he asks, eyes dilating, soullight guttering in his irises.
“Then I’d ask you why you’re so afraid of me.”
“You think highly of yourself.”
“You are afraid. Otherwise you would not hesitate.”
“What if I choose con?” His voice drops to a breath, hot on my mouth.
“Then I’d dare you to deceive me,” I say. “Make good on your reputation and your title. Kiss me so well and so thoroughly I forget it’s a lie. Make me believe it. Make me know it.”
One of his hands releases the hoop and snakes up my back, cradling the base of my skull, fingers tight in my curls, thumb stroking behind my ear as a grin quirks his mouth.
“Say ‘please.’”
Trembles shake through me. “Please,” I gasp.
He grins. “Good girl.”