Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Eliot Brooks had gentle hands.
That was the thing Dalene couldn't organize into something sensible afterward; how gentle the giant was.
The slip, the lurch, the fraction of a second where the ground was the wrong distance away, and then his hands at her waist, solid and certain, and gentle.
The world had stopped. The falling simply stopped. And she was safe.
It had been so long since Dalene had felt safe. Longer than when she'd started dating Tristan.
Had she ever felt safe when she'd dated Tristan?
She couldn't remember. She did remember the low hum of anxiety hovering in the wings.
And then the day he dropped the bomb on her, her emotions had exploded into this self contained danger zone that she tried to hold inside herself so that it wouldn't contaminate those around her.
But it wasn't working. People saw her hurt. They saw her pain. They kept reaching out even though she tried to hold it all in.
And now, in Eliot Brook's gentle arms — a man who did not care about her feelings — made her feel the safest she'd felt in, well, ever.
Then she heard her name. From a voice she knew so well. The feeling of safety dissipated and the hum of anxiety came back.
Tristan touched her check and Dalene swore she felt radioactive.
He didn't have the right to check on her. He had forfeited that along with everything else when he'd handed it all to someone else and acted like she should understand.
So yes. Maybe she stood a little closer to Eliot than the situation strictly required.
Maybe her hand found his arm and held on with slightly more intention than a woman who simply needed her balance.
And maybe she was grateful, with a gratitude that had nothing to do with the ladder, that Eliot did not step away.
He stayed exactly where he was. Then wonder of wonders, he put that gentle hand on the small of her back, and Dalene felt like she could've moved a mountain.
"How do you two know each other?" Tristan said. Still the concerned voice. Still looking at Eliot like the ladder had been his fault.
"We're neighbors," Dalene said. She felt Eliot glance down at her. She kept her eyes on Tristan. "We share a wall."
"And a love of Fleetwood Mac," Eliot said. He looked back down at her. The corner of his mouth was doing something that was almost, nearly, technically approaching a smile.
"And scones," he continued.
Dalene blinked a couple times, trying to bring the scene back into focus. "You don't like scones."
"I don't like lavender. In my mouth. Though it does smell good in your hair." Eliot leaned in and took a sniff.
Dalene's knees buckled. But she didn't go down. Not with his hand still steadying her at her low back. What was he doing?
"Yeah, I'm revising my position on lavender." He inhaled deeply, bringing her closer.
Dalene went without reservation.
"Is that what you're wearing today? You smell like lavender."
She did. She'd been using Vivienne's hand cream. Her grandmother loved lavender. In her food, on her body, under her pillow.
"Yes," Dalene said.
Eliot held her gaze for a moment. "I'm finding it less and less unpleasant."
He dipped his head again, and inhaled.
Dalene felt herself come completely undone.
She felt like those cartoons she used to watch as a child where a character catches a scent and becomes helpless, lifted off the ground by it, transported, feet dangling, following the trail of something irresistible without a single functioning thought in their head.
That was her. She was the scent cloud.
She was drifting, warmly and without resistance, directly into his nostrils.
She wanted to please him. She wanted to be the thing that made him close his eyes and exhale slowly.
She wanted to be lavender and vanilla and brown butter and every good warm thing she'd ever put into an oven, and she wanted to serve it to him.
Someone cleared their throat. At first Dalene thought it was Tristan. She was wrong.
"We're late." Brooke's voice was pleasant and final. She tightened her hand on Tristan's arm. "We're going to miss the reservation, sweetie."
Sweetie. Ugh. In the early part of their relationship, Tristan had asked Dalene not to call him that because Brooke used to call him by that pet name. He'd told Dalene that it had made him feel infantilized. Well, guess he forgot about that. The big baby.
Tristan's square jaw moved back and forth, like he wanted to say something. What came out was; "Good to see you, Dalene. You look—"
"Have a lovely dinner," Dalene said warmly.
Tristan's brows went up in surprise. She had never cut him off. Never interrupted him. Just like she hadn't even protested when he said he needed to make sure he got closure with his ex girlfriend after he and Dalene had been dating for months because a movie told him to.
Brooke steered him toward the main path and he went. He looked back once. Dalene kept her smile arranged until they were far enough away that it cost her less to hold it.
Then she exhaled. And deflated.
Eliot released her low back.
"Thank you," she said. "For — all of that. The ladder and the—" She gestured vaguely in the direction Tristan had gone. "The rest of it. You didn't have to play along."
"I wasn't playing," he said. "That was your ex," he said. Not a question.
Dalene nodded.
Eliot let out a low whistle. "I'm sorry."
Dalene couldn't help herself. She laughed.
She laughed because she'd heard those two words so many times since the break up.
Never had she heard them as though they were a bullet she'd dodged.
But she hadn't, hadn't she? She'd dodged a bullet when it came to Tristan.
She'd almost married a man that was in love with another woman.
But if he was so in love with Brooke, why had his gaze lingered on Dalene?
"You don't need to sneak around your place," Eliot said. "You hold your head high. You didn't do anything wrong."
"You're right," Dalene admitted. "I do make an awful criminal."
He grinned, and Dalene swore it lit up his whole face. Transformed him from handsome into devastating.
"If you ever need someone to return the favor — if there's an ex somewhere who needs to see you looking unbothered — I'm available. Consider me your beard."
Eliot's grin disappeared. He looked at her the way she imagined he looked at weather data that had come back proving his prediction wrong. The frown pulled at his brow. Something flickering behind his eyes that she couldn't read.
Of course. Of course he'd looked at her like that.
She'd just offered herself up like a consolation prize, like a woman so desperate to be useful that she'd invented a reason for a man to spend time with her.
Tristan had left. Eliot had declined to come inside her apartment.
And now she was standing in the middle of a farmers' market suggesting a fake relationship to a man who was looking at her like she'd said something faintly embarrassing.
She felt the smile freeze on her face. Felt the familiar machinery kick in. The fine-face assembling itself over the top of the mortification with the practiced speed of a woman who had been doing this her whole life.
"Forget I—"
"Pretending doesn't get anyone anywhere." Eliot's voice wasn't unkind. Just even. "Leading someone to believe something that isn't true. Lying about who you are or what you feel. It never ends where you think it will."
Dalene said nothing.
"I'm here if you need a hand," he said. "Genuinely. But I don't do fake." A beat. "Especially not when I'm only here temporarily."
She nodded. She kept the smile exactly where she'd put it. "Of course. You're right. Forget I mentioned it. And thanks again."
She picked up her bag. She held her head high. She walked in the opposite direction and did not look back.