Chapter 21 #3
I blinked in surprise. He’d noticed all of that? None of it had been conscious, yet thinking back on it, he was right.
My stomach flipped at the reminder of just how capable he was of truly seeing me.
“Yeah,” I admitted, my voice cracking until I cleared my throat. “I do. But I’m sure you know what that’s like. You probably miss your family, too, right?”
Then again, aside from confiding about his parents’ divorce and his mom’s experience with addiction, he hadn’t mentioned his family even once. Not before the assignment, and certainly not during it.
“I do. Most of the time, anyway.”
“Why only most of the time?”
He hummed thoughtfully. “They can be a bit… smothering … at times. Especially my mom. I think she’s trying to atone for the lost years in my childhood, so I don’t argue most of the time. And my dad, I think he was just lonely until he met his fiancée.”
“And do you like this future stepmom?”
He chuckled. “I do now, but not at first. You know how much I love change.”
“As much as fish love oxygen, I’d say,” I teased. “Do you have any siblings?”
“Nope.” A hint of amusement lifted his voice. “Only child. I always wanted siblings, though.”
“Yeah?” That could explain why he was such a family guy, honestly. With the way his family had fractured and restructured, coupled with his loneliness growing up, it would make sense if he wanted multiple kids of his own. “They’re a pain in the butt most of the time. Until they’re not.”
He shifted until his head rested against the headboard, the rustle of his hair against the wood barely audible. “Call me a masochist, but I think I would have liked that kind of pain.”
“You wake up at five-thirty every morning, Colt. You are definitely a masochist.”
He laughed and bumped his shoulder against mine. Though it was a playful nudge, it took me by surprise so much I swayed an embarrassing amount before righting myself. Ignoring my resolve to keep my distance from him, I took the opportunity to scooch a few inches closer.
Because I, too, was a masochist.
“Not to mention,” I continued, “you had to sit across from someone you hated for two months and kept coming back for more. So, yeah. Masochism has always been on the table for you.”
He huffed softly, and I wished again that I could make out the details of his face. I couldn’t explain how I knew, but I did. He was smiling. And I wanted to see it, experience it, taste it in any sense possible so badly that I had to sit on my hands to keep from reaching for him.
“For the record, so did you,” he countered. “I know I’m not the easiest person to be around sometimes.”
I used to think so. There would undoubtedly be days where I’d think it again, when our quirks drove each other nuts. But in the end, quirks were the accessories, the details that contributed to our makeup.
But they weren’t everything.
They weren’t the bones. The soul. The framework that made us who we are. Some days his quirks might irritate me, and mine would irritate him. Other days, I’d adore them. And every single one of those days, his soul would remain the same.
That was what you fell in love with, in the end. Souls. That was what you offered in return, what you gave and melted and alloyed until you built something new and beautiful together.
And that was why losing it broke you.
I freed my hand and tucked a loose curl behind my ear, my heart hammering for reasons that had nothing to do with the storm. “Maybe I like the pain, too.” I swallowed hard. My lungs refused to take a full breath. “Or maybe it isn’t painful at all. Not to me.”
He didn’t reply, and the silence weighed against my chest. Squeezed it until I thought I’d burst. The monsoon outside blended into a hum against the roar of blood in my head.
I’d said too much, shown too much, given him pieces he didn’t want.
I’d looked at the fence I built between us hours ago, inspected it for weaknesses, and taken a sledgehammer to it.
Two hours. That’s how long I’d lasted before caving.
All because the temptation of knowing him was too great to resist.
I was about to backpedal, change the topic, take my dishes to the sink—anything to salvage my pride—when his fingers brushed against mine where my hand rested on the mattress.
I inhaled sharply at the contact. He’d kept his hand close enough I could feel its heat, the pull of the mattress toward it.
If he didn’t want to risk any accidental contact, he would’ve moved farther away, right?
Granted, I was a little rusty in the dating department, but when it came to Colt, it felt like there were completely new rules, anyway.
So, feeling every bit like an inexperienced teenager with butterflies in her stomach, I slid my hand against the sheet until our fingers touched again. But unlike him, I didn’t pull away.
This time, neither did he.
In fact, after a few heart stopping seconds of fingers-only contact, he flipped his hand over in one smooth motion to hold mine in its entirety. His hands were as warm and lightly calloused as I remembered and exactly what I wanted.
All over me, really, but this was a great start.
It was a heady rush, this simple, innocent form of intimacy. Flutters in my stomach, cotton in my mouth, and warmth flooding my veins. I wanted so much more, and I wanted exactly this. Ecstasy in simplicity.
Neither of us spoke for a full minute. We sat in the dark, grabbing onto a new trapeze together, waiting to see whether we’d fly or fall. It felt monumental and terrifying and exciting, toeing the line between colleagues and more. Fake spouses and more.
“Colt?” I finally asked, my voice small and embarrassingly vulnerable.
“Hmm?”
He rubbed his thumb along my finger absently, nearly melting me into a puddle here and now. If something this innocent made me chomp at the bit, I shuddered at the possibilities of what else his touch could do to me.
I shook the thought away and cleared my throat. “Is this… real?”
His thumb stopped moving, his hand tensing ever so slightly in mine. “Is what real?”
“This. You and me. Right now.” I swallowed hard. “I need to know now before—” I cut my sentence short, the unfinished before I fall in love with you ringing through my thoughts. “I just need to know.”
“I… don’t know.”
My sprinting heart tripped on its shoelaces and plummeted. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know.”
When I started slipping my hand out of his, he tightened his hold. Lightning flashed, illuminating his furrowed brow and chiseled cheekbones in shades of gray.
“I don’t know how much of this is because of the nature of our assignment,” he continued, his words uncharacteristically rushed.
Urgent, almost. “I don’t know if the lines are just blurring for me, too, or if something has changed between us by itself or if this was always inevitable.
I don’t know what to do about it, and I’m positive that acting on this ” —he squeezed my hand— “would be a mistake. Especially before the assignment is over. But . . .”
When he trailed off, I shifted to face him, freeing my hand from his. The roar in my head increased to a deafening decibel. I didn’t know whether to run or fight or throw up. In my mind’s eye, I fell from the trapeze, the wind whipping my hair and stealing the scream from my throat.
“But” —his voice was soft and deliberate, each word carrying the weight of a kingdom on its shoulders— “I think doing nothing would be an even bigger one.”
I blinked rapidly. Had I heard that right?
“So, what do we do?” I whispered. Thunder rocked the sky. I tried not to take it as an omen. “I… I want this to be real, Colt. Everything else can be a lie, but you and me? I need you to be you with me. The real you. As much as you can, and when you can’t, I want to know. Somehow.”
He shifted, the mattress dipping under his weight until I tipped toward him. “And you’ll do the same?”
I cracked a small smile. “I promise. Speed-eating and ‘height of fashion’ and all.”
“Well, maybe you can keep those parts to yourself a little longer.”
“Hey!” I laughed and cuffed him on the leg.
Fast as the lightning outside, his nimble fingers wrapped around my wrist and gently tugged me closer. I eagerly complied, and he took both of my hands in his.
“There will be some lines we can’t cross, Lex.” He paused. The air crackled with energy, and his voice became a touch huskier. “No matter how much we might want to.”
My breath caught in my throat. The visions I’d shoved out of my mind came back with a vengeance, heating my blood. “Do you? Want to, I mean.”
A dark chuckle escaped him, unexpected and intoxicating. “There is no shortage of things I want to do when it comes to you.”
My brain broke, leaving only a buzzing white noise in its place. My mouth went dry. My breath lingered in my chest, a cushion for my thumping heart.
“But I can’t do any of them until this is all over,” he clarified, squeezing my hands.
“This feels too important to jeopardize, and not only because of our delicate situation. There are things we’ll need to figure out if this is going to work long-term.
That includes making sure whatever this is between us doesn’t change once we’re no longer living under the same roof. ”
There he went, crushing my little dreams with his logic again.
Still, even in my twitterpated state, I couldn’t deny he had a point.
For one, he wanted a family, and last he knew, I didn’t want to have any kids.
And, yeah, the nature of our cover complicated things by a thousand.
If we crossed the line of no return between us while technically on the job, the consequences could be dire.
One or both of us could get transferred to a different field office. Maybe even lose our badges.
“You’re right,” I relented. “We’ll take things slow. Even though we’ll be around each other twenty-four-seven and—” I frowned. “No more shirtless pull-ups, okay? For my sanity’s sake.”
He chuckled again, and I could picture the sly smirk that undoubtedly graced his lips. “Not sure I can promise that.”
I groaned, not at all disappointed. “Okay, fine. How will we know what’s real between us when we’re out in public? Because this could really mess with my head.”
He hummed thoughtfully and rubbed gentle circles against the backs of my hands with his thumbs, the touch as electrifying as it was comforting. “How about a code word? Something innocuous. Like… daffodils.”
The corner of my mouth inched upward. “You really want to know why I stare at them so much, don’t you?”
Not that I thought I’d stared at them at all before now. Just a lingering glance whenever I passed the flowerbeds out front. But that was enough, I guess.
“I want to know why you look at them the way you do,” he corrected. “They mean something to you.”
“All right, yeah. They do.” I blew out a breath and shifted my legs to improve circulation. “They were my brother’s favorite flower. He’d point them out every time he saw them, no matter what.”
Kind of like me whenever I drove past cows.
I used to think Dominick pointed them out because they were one of the two flowers he knew the names of, but now, I liked to imagine he loved them so much because they were like sunbeams popping out of the ground after a harsh winter. That was why I loved them, anyway. And they reminded me of him.
I smiled, sadly. “I’d planted some in the window box of my old apartment back in Philly so I’d always have some to bring to his grave on his angel date.
This year, I transferred right before, and so I’d tried to get a florist to deliver a bouquet with them in it on my behalf.
There was some sort of issue with the order, though, and they cancelled it and—” I shook my head to clear it, cutting my rambling short.
“The point is, this year I couldn’t get him his daffodils. ”
Thunder rumbled, more distant than the last time. Colt silently absorbed my explanation. The faintest rustle of movement came from his direction. “When is his angel date?”
My smile widened, completely devoid of humor. “March eighth. The day we?—”
“Met,” Colt finished. “Wow. So… that explains a lot, actually.”
I cringed at the memory of my first day at the Detroit field office. Everything had gone spectacularly wrong. Everything . And yet, now something that felt spectacularly right had come of it. “Yeah, I’m still sorry about that.”
He sighed. “Me, too. I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. It was obvious you’d had a horrible morning. I just had no idea how horrible.”
“And I should’ve done the same for you.” I squeezed his hands playfully. “Turns out, you’re only half as annoying as I thought you’d be.”
“Funny,” he mused drily, “I could say the same about you.”
I laughed until another blitz of lightning sobered me. “So, daffodils and no more pretending with each other?”
He pulled me a little closer, a smile in his voice. “No more pretending.”