Chapter 11
Ellis
It’s a freezing, skin-searing, soaked fifteen minutes of flying, but it’s the fastest way to get Lacey back to her apartment. We land on her balcony, and she slips out of my arms. The heat of her body being pressed to mine evaporates in an instant.
I want to make sure she’s ok—that was a much more dire situation that either of us expected to get into tonight. The most important thing right now is getting warm and dry and clean.
I follow her in, tucking my wings close enough to fit through the doorway, sliding the balcony door shut behind us. It’s a relief to step inside somewhere warm. Despite all that wind pressure, we’re both still pretty drenched.
Neither of us bothers to turn on any of the lights. It might attract attention and let someone know we’re here.
“And you’re sure we don’t need to worry about Steel dropping by?” I ask quietly, hating that I have to invoke the thought of him. After the last time, better safe than sorry.
“Yeah, it’s eleven p.m. If he’s not here now, well, Clayton practically lives at the office—” she starts to say, and then cuts herself off, her mouth a hard line. She doesn’t meet my eyes.
We can’t have a moment alone that isn’t poisoned by his name.
I stand back as she heads out of her bedroom toward her front door and slides the deadbolt into place with a loud metal clack. Then she heads into her kitchen, digging through her pantry.
Even as she holds herself together, it’s clear how upset she is. If I had known he was stringing her along like that, maybe I wouldn’t have been as callous in my response. Maybe now it’ll finally be clear to her that she needs to cut him out of her life.
Every movement she makes is direct and stiff, her shoulders tense. She tosses her waterlogged phone into a bowl and then empties a couple boxes of instant rice mixes on top of it. Damage control.
I haven’t moved from her doorway, looking around like the world’s most awkward gargoyle before I realize I can’t just stay in this spot the rest of the night.
I end up walking stiltedly to keep the water from dripping all over the place.
My eyes adjust to the dimness of her apartment.
It’s darker further in, but the large floor-to-ceiling windows light up the edges, even with how grim the weather outside is.
It’s hard to imagine her living here, with how big and empty it all is.
It looks like it was taken out of a magazine, all the furniture styled and coordinated.
Very little looks personal or significant.
I’ve never been in a place this obviously clean before.
Nothing is broken or shows any real wear.
I feel like I can’t touch anything or risk leaving a gritty trail of dirt.
I move out of the way as Lacey crosses back over toward her bedroom. The space between us feels strange and empty.
We’ve barely said more than two words at a time to each other since getting out of the waterway tunnels. I don’t know how to apologize for going too far without reminding her of what I said, I keep opening my mouth to say something and deciding against it. For all I know, she hates me for it.
I watch as she shrugs out of my jacket, underneath it her sweatshirt is splotched with grime in all the places it didn’t cover. Her hair is stringy and wet, half-frizzy and dry from flying. She kicks off her boots into the pile of grimy clothes.
Despite having watched her shuck one item of clothing after another, I didn’t really expect her to wrestle out of her top and leggings next, leaving them crumpled on top of the pile. The somber pit in my stomach quickly becoming horny is the weirdest sensation.
She turns around and looks at me, just her black bra and her gray underwear and her big brown eyes.
The piercing sensation from when I heard Clayton call her his girlfriend still lingers against my heart, raw like a wound.
It stings when she meets my eyes, doubt creeping in its jagged edges.
Her frustration seems genuine, but what if she’s just lying to cover up another lie?
I want to trust her, but that doesn’t mean I should.
I wince at the thought, hating that I would even consider it, and close my eyes. “Tell me to leave, Lacey.”
The corners of her mouth tug down as she takes in my words. I don’t want to hurt her, but if she doesn’t actually want me, I wish she would just choose Clayton and be done with it.
For several moments, all we can do is stare at each other. It’s so quiet between us that the sound of rain easily catches our attention, beating down with a new fervor. The sky flickers with lightning, the tall windows rattling under the onslaught of rain and thunder.
“I want you to stay,” she near-whispers. I watch her swallow, and take a step closer to reach out, laying her palm against my chest.
That single gesture is a bastion of relief.
Closing my eyes, I take in every small touch, her wrists against my collarbone, her fingers on my neck as she traces upward to the zipper. She undoes the closure at my neck, and the fabric releases from how it accommodates my wings. I tug at the sleeves, removing it down to my waist.
“I’m going to turn the shower on,” Lacey murmurs with a tilt of her head toward it. With that she turns, and pads barefooted into the bathroom, stripping off her bra and panties on the way.
For a solid moment, all I can do is stare down the hallway after her, heart pounding. She didn’t say, “join me in the shower,” because if she had there’s no way I would have missed it. On the other hand, it definitely also wasn’t “I’m going to take a shower, wait out here.”
Oh, be cool. Be so fucking cool. Don’t let me fuck this up.
I follow her, pretending my heart isn’t pounding a million miles a minute.
The bathroom is tiled on walls, ceiling and floor in large marble panels, near seamless.
I almost don’t spot the shower until she turns it on, steam quickly building up against a near-invisible glass panel that divides the room.
There’s another one of those floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the entire city from her shower.
“It’s one-way glass, though most people can’t really see up here anyway,” she explains, as if I’m standing in the doorway because I’m worried about the window instead of the fact she hasn’t really said anything.
My strides are longer than hers, and I close the distance between us as she steps back into the water. Various specks of dirt, grime and whatever else rinses out, collecting in the drain.
There doesn’t need to be anything here between us, this can just be two friends, naked in the shower, right? No, that sounds crazy. She just stripped down and invited me into the shower, of course it’s going to be sexual.
I find myself leaning against the tiled wall, tentatively watching while she lathers soap into her hair. The rivulets of water hug her shape, carving paths down her skin, the gentle pouch of her belly, the width of her thighs.
There’s nothing I would like to do more than stare and simply appreciate, but after everything that happened back in the waterways, I know she isn’t alright. There’s a tension in her posture, the way she moves.
With a little trepidation in her expression, Lacey glances over her shoulder, all doe eyes, before she begins rinsing her hair. “Are you waiting for me to use up all the hot water first?”
That sends a zing through my middle, bringing me off the wall. Lacey turns her back to me again, combing her fingers through her hair. I finish peeling off my flying suit, stepping out of it.
She’s lathering a bar of soap between her hands when I reach her, stepping under the water with her. The sound of the shower hitting my wings sounds like rain against an umbrella before I relax them a little.
Tracing a knuckle against her back, I’m surprised her skin is still cold and clammy.
“Here, let me help,” I offer, my voice coming out a little too low. Her eyelashes flutter against her cheek as I wrap an arm around her middle. She sighs as she leans back into me, relaxing a little.
I gather her wet hair, twisting it together and moving it out of the way, over her shoulder. Taking the bar of soap from her hands, I begin to drag it over her.
With a little scrubbing, the oily residue from the ooze dissolves, washing away down the drain.
The heat of the shower is finally starting to warm her, and that knowledge finally lets me relax a little.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d been clenching my teeth through the last hour or so, the adrenaline finally subsiding.
It was utter chaos in that lab under the city, the way everything happened all at once.
Beforehand, I’d been a little afraid I wouldn’t be able to protect her if everything went to shit, but she handled herself well under pressure.
She acted fast enough that we got out of there relatively unscathed.
Bringing the bar of soap down her arm, I find a tender spot just under her elbow. Already the skin is starting to purple.
Lacey stiffens, inhaling sharply as she tugs her arm out of my grasp. She shies away just enough that I can’t see her expression. I almost forgot she fell pretty hard in the waterways during all that mayhem.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says, before I can apologize for touching it. If I thought she seemed guarded before, she curls somehow further in on herself. Her mouth is a small, tight line, twisting her fingers together.
“. . . Yeah?”
“Yes, and I don’t think you should make a judgment on how this time went,” she says insistently, huffing a breath.
She hugs herself in a way that is momentarily distracting—her breasts, lathered up in soap suds, squeeze over the top of where her arms cross.
“I mean, I know I panicked, and then when that guy showed up—”
I blink, lost.