Chapter 14 #2
“Oh, very vague,” he determines. “But I think I get what you’re saying. Or…not saying.”
“I wasn’t a doormat,” I say, insistent.
He gives me a droll look. “You’re literally seated in a throne right now. You couldn’t be a doormat if you tried.” His brows go low. “It takes more than one person’s effort to make a relationship work.”
“No amount of ironing in the world can make up the difference—” A memory strikes me.
“I ironed the shirt he wore to dinner that night!” I blurt.
I’d forgotten about that. “I was pressing the skirt of my dress, and he asked me if I’d do his shirt.
He was planning to dump me within the hour and still asked me to iron his goddamn shirt. ” I scowl, incensed anew. “Fucker.”
Ian chuckles. “And that’s not who you want to be now?”
“Hell no!” I say, though I do find ironing quite soothing. “Now, I’m someone who can climb a rope.”
He makes a thoughtful sound. “More like someone who knows that she can climb a rope. You already had the strength; you only needed the mechanics.”
“Then, someone… who can back squat her body weight?”
“What, Tuesday’s workout? That was a set of five,” he scoffs, but his tone is light. “Your one-rep will be heavier than that. Another fifteen percent, at least.”
“Oh. Nice. So, I guess,” I muse, “I’m just a gal who’s learning what she’s capable of.”
He grunts. I don’t even pretend that I’m not into it. “Still vague. And saccharine.”
“Oh, shut up,” I complain, but I’m grinning. He smiles back.
There’s still a question hovering between us, the why of it all. Why the cracks developed, why I’d been so devoted to patching them, why it had been Cole who finally acknowledged that we were done. Why that had made me sad.
And I have a why of my own. Why, if Ian remembers I’d said that I was “a lot of things” in the bathroom that night, he has yet to comment on the fact that I’d been scared, too.
When I walked into the apartment with Heather and Mark, the lingering reek of my desperation had hit me like a slap in the face.
Not the dying gasps of my relationship with Cole or the time I’d wasted denying the end of our run, but the despair of those final days in that space as I waited to find out what the hell was happening to me.
If I was going blind, if I was succumbing to a degenerative nerve condition, and the knowledge that I’d be going through it with one less person’s support.
And while I’m becoming a back-squatting, rope-climbing himbo wrangler, discreetly jonesing for her boss, if I end up with MS, there’s a chance I’ll lose all of that, too. And how much more desperate will I be then, knowing how much more I could have been?
I suppress a shudder as I pull up my amended mantra. Now. Focus on now.
DING!
I turn to see what floor we’re on. Nine to go.
“You don’t have to be useful.”
“What?” I twist back toward Ian. He’s settled his head in his hand, elbow propped on the chair, bringing us level. He is so close.
His eyes fall to my lips, then meet my gaze again. “I get that it’s your thing, being useful. But you don’t have to be useful to other people to have value. You can just… be. You.”
The words wrap around my sad, scared, stupid heart.
“You say that like you know who that is,” I say.
“You say that like you don’t.” There’s worry in his reply. Care.
I smile and risk a look at his lips. “I’m finding out, remember?”
He is so close.
The elevator’s movement sets us rocking, and while I’ve long since adjusted to the subtle swaying, this time, I let it shift me a few critical inches.
I forgive myself for believing that Ian does the same and take it as my green light.
I’m not sad or scared as I close the space between us and kiss him.
Barely. A brush of lips, dry and soft. It’s over in an instant.
I don’t know that I’ve actually broken contact when I whisper, “Thank you.”
He sucks in a breath, our faces so close that the movement of air tickles my lips. The sensation compels me to lean in for firmer contact, my lips parting. His fingertips ghost over my jawline, encouraging my head to angle, the tip of his tongue—
DING!
We flinch apart as the doors grind open, the distance between us still negligible. But instead of the stillness that’s followed our arrival at the last umpteen floors, the car jostles with the boarding of our first passenger. Ian’s attention shifts.
He leans back farther. “Alistair?”
I wheel to face the doors. Alistair observes us as though he’s strolled into Firehouse to us chatting at the desk, not huddled together in an enclosed space, drowning in one another’s pheromones and our faces within tongue’s distance of one another.
“Oh, hey.” He raises Mushu, whose vines he’s now angled like a sash across his bare torso. “Ellie, can I hang on to this guy? Like, keep him in my room while you’re living with us?”
I settle into a seated position, as though the taste of cinnamon isn’t swirling in my mouth. “Sure?” My head clears enough to process what he’s asking. “I’ll let you know when to water him.” I can barely hear myself over the rush of blood in my ears. “That’s Mushu, by the way. He’s a dragon tail.”
Alistair’s brows raise, and he cocks his head, as though reevaluating his worldview in light of this new information. “Sick.” Then he frowns. “Dude, your old place sucks. The elevator is slow as shit.”