10. Kill the Quiet
Chapter ten
Kill the Quiet
Rafe
She opens the door in my sweater and I forget why I came.
Not completely. Dominic, Nico, the Offering, all of it is still waiting in the hall behind me. But Lorelei’s got her hair piled on top of her head like she got tired halfway through fixing it, the sleeves cover half her hands, and there’s a streak of tomato sauce drying across her collarbone.
I stand there long enough for her to notice.
“You’re staring.”
“You got sauce on you.”
She looks down, but the sweater blocks her view. “Where?”
I point to my own collarbone. She rubs the wrong side.
“Other one.”
Her hand moves and misses again.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
“I’ve been cooking,” she says. “Or attempting something close enough that the fire department hasn’t been called yet.”
“In my sweater.”
“It was closest.”
She says it like that settles ownership and steps aside.
I follow her into the apartment. Something on the stove is boiling hard enough to spit foam down the side of the pot.
“Lo.”
“I know.”
“You trying to make pasta or summon it?”
“I had it under control before you distracted me.”
“I was standing outside.”
“Very distractingly.”
She shoves the pot off the burner with one hand and reaches for a dish towel with the other. I catch the handle before she can grab it bare.
“Hot.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
She elbows me out of the way, and I steal the spoon.
“Touch that sauce and lose the hand.”
“You made enough to drown somebody.”
“I was emotional when I measured.”
I taste it anyway, and she smacks my arm with the towel. The sauce is good, probably too much garlic, so I take another bite to make sure.
“Rafe.”
“What?”
“You’re eating it like soup.”
“It’s good soup.”
“It’s pasta sauce.”
“Then it’s bad soup.”
She tries not to laugh and fails. Something in my shoulders loosens along with my jaw, and I realize I hadn’t noticed how hard I’d been holding either.
She points the spoon at me. “You’re doing it again.”
“Eating?”
“Looking at me like I’m the only interesting thing in a five-mile radius.”
“You are.”
“I have sauce on my neck.”
“Collarbone.”
“That correction somehow made it worse.”
I lean against the counter and watch her try to save dinner. I drove her back to campus and kept going after she got out, made it four blocks, then turned around. By the time I parked outside her apartment, I still hadn’t decided what I was going to say if she answered.
Nico landed this morning and put the whole house on edge without raising his voice once. Cassian and Ash had some kind of fight in the garage, and both of them have been walking around since like they’d rather chew glass than explain it.
I didn’t come here to confess any of that. At least, that’s what I tell myself while she drains the pasta.
She lets me carry the bowls while she brings two forks and a fistful of napkins. We eat on the couch because the small table by the window is buried under sheet music, unopened mail, and three mugs she claims are still in use.
“They’re forming a community,” she says when I look at them.
“They’re growing fur.”
“That’s the newest member.”
“Jesus.”
“Don’t judge him. He’s shy.”
She tells me about a professor who spent an entire semester pronouncing Debussy like de-bussy and got far enough into the year that correcting him would’ve required the whole class to admit they’d been discussing it behind his back.
“So nobody said anything?” I ask.
“We were trying to protect him.”
“You laughed every time.”
She does the impression. It’s terrible, and I nearly choke on my pasta.
For twenty minutes, nobody says Offering, claimant, or Nico.
Lorelei complains about the choir director changing a key three days before a performance, and I tell her that doesn’t sound legal.
She says she checked and apparently musicians have no rights.
My stomach hurts from laughing by the time I finish everything in my bowl and scrape up the sauce she left behind.
We end up on her bed with the dishes in the sink and some show running on her laptop. I couldn’t tell you what it’s about. There’s a detective with excellent hair and a dead woman everybody keeps pretending to be sad about.
Lorelei’s legs are draped over mine, her head against my shoulder. I drag my fingers along her arm from wrist to elbow and back again, following the same path until I stop thinking about where the cameras are in every room.
There aren’t any here.
I checked.
“You’re tense,” she says.
“I’m not.”
She presses two fingers into the muscle above my shoulder blade, and pain shoots up my neck.
“Fuck.”
“Not tense?”
“Maybe a little. Long week.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
The answer comes out too fast. Lorelei lifts her head, and I wait for the next question because usually there would be one.
Instead, she looks at me for another second and says, “Okay.”
My fingers stop halfway down her arm.
For weeks, I’ve been giving Dominic pieces of her life: where she goes, who she sees, what makes her laugh when she thinks nobody important is listening. She asks me one question, hears no, and settles against me again.
I start tracing the same path over her arm.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re still being strange.”
“You got sauce on you.”
Her hand flies to her collarbone. “You let me sit through dinner like this?”
“I told you at the door.”
“You failed to communicate the severity.”
“I like it.”
“That might be the least romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Not even close.”
“No, you’re right. There was the time you told me my dress made me look flammable.”
“It did.”
“It was red.”
“It had feathers.”
“On the sleeves.”
“Fire spreads.”
She laughs into my shoulder, and I bend down and kiss the stain.
Her breath catches.
I do it again, slower this time, letting my mouth move from her collarbone to the side of her neck while her fingers curl into my shirt. The joke fades out of the room without either of us having to acknowledge it.
I slide my hand along her jaw and turn her face toward mine. When I kiss her, she meets me halfway.
I try not to make it mean too much.
That lasts maybe three seconds.
Dominic’s monitors, the reports, Nico coming home, whatever date has everybody in the house moving faster while they tell her less — all of it crowds in anyway, and my hand tightens against her face.
“Rafe.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
She pulls back enough to look at me, her fingers still hooked in my collar.
“Acting like this is the last time you’re ever going to see me.”
I go still.
She watches my face. “Is it?”
“No.”
“Then why are you kissing me like you’re leaving for war?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re a terrible liar tonight.”
“Only tonight?”
“Tonight you’re not even putting your back into it.”
My mouth opens, and nothing comes out.
I could tell her about the surveillance first. Start there. Give her one true thing and see what it pulls loose.
Instead, I picture her looking around the apartment, checking the corners, trying to remember what I’ve seen and what Dominic has.
“I’m good,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “Rafe.”
“I just wanted to see you.”
“You see me all the time.”
“Not like this.”
She looks down at herself. “Covered in dinner?”
“In my clothes. In your apartment. Yelling at pasta.”
“I didn’t yell.”
“You threatened it.”
“It knew what it did.”
I smile.
She doesn’t.
For a second I think she’s going to ask again, but her grip loosens around my collar.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says. “But don’t make me feel stupid for knowing there’s something.”
“I’m not.”
“You are a little.”
She settles back against the pillows, leaving a few inches between us.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
She reaches for my hand anyway.
I turn hers over and run my thumb across her palm, and I don’t let it go any further. I want to. My body makes that clear every time she shifts against me, every time her thumb passes over my knuckles, every time I look down and remember she’s wearing nothing but my sweater and those shorts.
Wanting has never been the problem.
I pull her back against my chest and leave it there.
The show keeps playing. The detective arrests the wrong man, and Lorelei tells me this without opening her eyes.
“You don’t know that,” I say.
“He has sad eyebrows. It’s never the one with sad eyebrows.”
“That’s your evidence?”
“I took a criminology elective.”
“You dropped it.”
“After learning the important part.”
Ten minutes later, her breathing changes. I trace my fingers over her shoulder blade until I’m sure she’s asleep, then stop pretending I’m watching the show.
The room is warm, my arm is going numb under her, and the laptop light flickers over the wall every time the scene changes. She fits against me like this is normal.
I press my mouth to the top of her head.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
She shifts, and for one second I stop breathing. Then she tucks her face closer against my chest and goes still again.
I keep my eyes on the wall.
The show ends, and I let the next episode start.