Chapter 24
He watches her face as the words leave her. It’s fascinating to him, how words coming out of her mouth, the ideas and passion behind them, awaken her face. They are words she’s already forming into lines she might write down, a dashed-off memo she’ll hand to him. “Just some notes you might want to use for one of your speeches,” she’ll say.
He’s wanted to be there in the midst of that casual alchemy. In the air around her hand and a pencil, her face studying sentences on a page, that short double line between her brows. He can see it as she goes on talking, those lines like a portal. He remembers what he felt once when they were first together, a kind of hunger to track the complex workings of her mind, and when he realized he couldn’t—that, like him, she’d always keep some space of herself apart—something in him wanted to tear the whole architecture down.
The memory comes in a rush. He’s not proud of it—the coldness he showed her, the arguments and small cruelties. The odd satisfaction he used to feel sometimes when he said something dismissive and the words hit, and he watched that strong light in her eyes fade. He doesn’t like remembering this.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
He smiles at her. “Come on,” he says, standing up. “Let’s go find Caroline and take a walk before the light is gone.”