Chapter 6
Ren
The ink on the back of Miller’s hand pulls taut when he clenches his coffee cup, shifting back and forth in his seat.
He swallows, tossing the occasional worried glance over his shoulder before he lifts the steaming mug, offering me a grin that looks unsure, unused almost, before saying, “You didn’t have to get the coffee. ”
“Oh.” I wave a hand. “It’s the least I could do. I should really be thanking you. You’re the one who saved me from the embarrassment of having to sit with a stained shirt in front of my entire department.”
I leave out the part about Scott and the job he stole out from underneath me just because he could.
“Sorry I couldn’t do anything about the mustard.” The corners of Miller’s eyes crinkle, and that blue, almost like the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, that looks a bit like he might be drowning—swirls, shifting, sending him towards more shallow waters.
Scrunching my nose, I shrug a shoulder. “Shampoo works wonders.”
He nods, a muscle ticking in a stubble-dusted jaw. He stays silent, until his teeth come down on the inside of his cheek, and he gives a dry snort. He looks up, apologetic. “Sorry. I’m . . . bad at this now.”
“At having coffee?”
A smile whispers over his lips but he shakes his head. “No . . . being in public. Talking to people.”
“I don’t mind. I spend my days with fossils.” I lean forward, like we’re colluding over the ancient secrets of the dinosaurs. “They aren’t particularly talkative.”
He huffs a laugh. “Right. Ren Jacobs, collections manager of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Museum. Knower of fossils.”
I glance down at my blouse. I don’t remember putting on my name tag today—kids don’t particularly care who or what you are.
It’s not there.
But the sound of my name on his mouth is.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. And that same mouth that said my name—not like I was nothing, but like I was something—turns lopsided and sheepish.
“My publicist . . . she told me who you were . . . but I didn’t introduce myself.
” His tattooed hand abandons his coffee mug when he scrambles to hold it out for me. “I’m—”
I meet it with mine before he can finish. “That’s okay. I know who you are.”
Apprehension draws a line between his brows. “And who’s that?”
“Miller Colson-Burke. Shortstop. Rescuer of collections managers with sticky shirts.” I tip my chin up. “Secret dinosaur enthusiast.”
“Dinosaur enthusiasm is yet to be determined.” He holds my hand in his for a second longer, and I’d swear his thumb twitches across the back of mine in a phantom brush. “But I guess the other things are true.”
I settle back into my chair, hands wrapping back around my mug in the absence of his. “You guess?”
“I guess,” he repeats, taking a long swallow of his coffee.
My eyes cut to the back of his hand and the M inked there, and they skip to the empty space on his jacket above the heart that lives in his chest. A heart that I don’t think is very empty at all.
“You can ask,” Miller cuts in, voice rough.
I look back up at him with soft blinks. “Was he—”
He takes another measured swallow. His thumb taps against the rim of his coffee mug, and I think a dam bursts somewhere inside him.
“We were cousins. Our moms were sisters. Mine . . .” He pauses, chewing over the next word, but the water rushes through and the rest of the story comes with it, all hurried.
“Left. When I was seven. His parents, my aunt and uncle, adopted me.” Miller taps his sternum absentmindedly.
“One last name became two. I was . . . never much of a Colson anyway, I don’t think.
I didn’t know my dad. So I was, uh, always a Burke.
” His eyes darken again, and I think he might get swept back into the ocean, but he keeps talking.
“Matty was . . . my best friend. More like my . . . brother.” His voice cracks on the word.
“We played together since we were hitting tee balls around a field. He started pitching and I moved to shortstop. Played competitively until we went to different schools in the States. Different teams in the minors, too, but we both got drafted back home. Played together for a few years. Won the World Series together last season and uh . . . the rest is history.”
He chokes on the final words, and it hangs heavy—what he means by the rest but won’t say.
Miller takes a deep inhale, shoulders stretching his jacket, and he looks up at me, jaw set in a hard line like it’s those sharp bones, the angle of his mouth that seals the dam again, so he doesn’t have to say any more.
I could Google it. But I don’t think I will.
It might be public information for most people, but it feels like something private to him.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “Is that what you meant? When you said earlier that after the last game, people finally started talking about something else?”
He nods, thumb digging into the side of his mug. “Yeah. First time no one’s asked me about him since he died last fall. They were all more interested in my chivalry.”
Miller looks up with a grin that doesn’t quite meet his eyes.
I roll mine, and he lets out a real laugh.
“My publicist thinks . . .” he starts but his shoulders pull back with a jerk of his head. “Never mind.”
“What?” I ask.
“She wanted me to . . . I don’t know. Talk to you.
Take photos with you at the events.” He rushes to finish when my eyes sharpen.
“I’m—I want—I asked for a trade, and, uh .
. . I’m not . . . it doesn’t look good. Press only ask about him and it’s .
. . messy. She thought people might, uh, leave me alone about him if I gave them something else to talk about. ”
I blink, another laugh that ends with a snort starts before I can stop it, and the embarrassment burns across my cheeks.
Miller’s eyes cut to my mouth, and the corner of his slants upwards, like he might actually enjoy the sound.
But I can hear another voice, see another pair of eyes that harden with that same embarrassment I feel on my skin at the exact same sound, and I start shaking my head. “Sorry. If that’s why you came here today, I’m not . . . interested in some sort of staged . . . whatever.”
And I’m not. It sounds like one of Imani’s romance novels. But more than that—I see those phantom eyes hardening, and I hear the voice that would drip with cruel amusement.
I hear what it would tell me all these years later.
How even if I was playing pretend with someone, they’d learn the truth about me after all.
I want too much and not enough at the same time, and I’m not the type of person you choose to be with, not really.
I’m the person with no ambition and drive and only these silly little things I like as I play a caricature of myself.
That it’s not the shining light of a personality, it’s all these insecurities I really need to set a dimmer on bleeding through.
I try so hard for those old words not to catch.
“No.” Miller takes his hat off, raking a hand through his hair. He tugs on the ends. “I wasn’t sure why I came but . . . I meant it. The thank you. That’s all. No strings.”
“Okay.” I nod quietly.
“It was just . . . like I said. Nice to be asked about something other than him.”
I don’t miss the way he’s stopped using Matt’s name. How he seems like he might suffocate on the word and the weight of all the water pressing down on him. Like he’ll do anything to avoid saying it, and cling to any piece of refuse or debris that floats on by.
It would be a shame. For someone with eyes like that to get pulled under by whatever lives behind them.
“But we could be friendly.” I offer with a small smile. “At the fundraising gala, and any other events. I don’t mind.”
“Friendly?” His mouth turns down, like he’s never heard of the concept.
“Friendly,” I tell him, leaning forward on a soft laugh.
“Two people who are kind and cordial with one another. They say hello and talk about their days.” Wrinkling my nose, I throw out another lifeboat, so he doesn’t drown.
“They don’t talk about things that are off-limits and covered in strings. They’re just . . . polite.”
This new sort of grin tips his full lips up, and something, maybe a star that lives in the sky but it’s so bright it reflects off the ocean, winks to life behind his eyes. “What kind of things do they talk about?”
“Whatever they want.” I lift a shoulder.
His voice drops, rough and dragging over my skin like worn, strong hands. “About . . . adult things?”
I give him a flat look. “Adult things?”
“Yeah. Adult things.” He nods, the grin tugging to the left side now. The lines of his jaw sharpen; his eyes darken but that light still lives somewhere behind them, like it’s wide awake now and has no plans on going to sleep any time soon. “Like how dinosaurs and fossils aren’t just for kids.”
My head tips back in laughter, and I don’t even mind the snort. Especially not with his eyes roving across my face the way they do, settling on my mouth, when he hears it.
“Sure, then. Adult things.” I try to give him a serious look, even though a blush rises on my cheeks.
“Okay.” His eyes leave my bottom lip, and he smiles through a nod. “That sounds nice.”
He reaches his hand out, and I meet it with mine.
I don’t think I imagine it this time, the way his thumb whispers across my skin.