Chapter 46
STING
It happens in the work hub.
I’m there to check on a routine shipment, a task I could delegate but don’t because keeping my hands busy keeps my brain busy too. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, filling my hours with tasks that don’t need me so I have an excuse to be anywhere Vi isn’t.
Except today, she’s here.
She’s at the sorting station, organizing receipts, one of Armen’s projects. She’s concentrating, head down, pencil between her teeth while she shuffles papers. She doesn’t see me come in.
I should leave. Get the log later. Come back when she’s somewhere else. That’s what I’ve been doing for over a week now and it’s been working in the sense that I haven’t had to stand near her and feel shit and make any decisions about it.
I don’t leave.
I walk to the shelf where the logs are kept, six feet from her station, and pull the binder, open it, and start reading.
But I’m not seeing anything other than Vi in my peripheral vision, the line of her neck, the pencil in her teeth, and how her shirt has ridden up on one side to show a strip of skin above her hip.
She looks at me.
The air in the room changes. I can’t explain it better than that. One second, it’s a work hub with people at stations doing their jobs. The next, there’s a current running between us that I’m sure everyone in the room can feel.
She doesn’t say anything and neither do I. She looks at me and I look at the binder. She goes back to her receipts and I pretend to read. Rinse and repeat.
Then she gets up, picks up a stack of papers, and walks toward the back corridor where the filing cabinets are. She passes me on the way and her arm brushes mine. Brief. Accidental?
But it’s not. I wait thirty seconds, close the binder, and follow her.
The back passageway is narrow and dim, lined with old metal cabinets. Vi is standing at one of them with the drawer open, filing papers. Her back is to me but she heard me come in. I know this because her shoulders jumped when my footsteps hit the tile.
I stand there, three feet behind her. It’s just us, the filing cabinets, and whatever this is that’s been building between us for days.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she says. Still not turning around, filing a paper. Casual. Like she’s commenting on the weather.
“Yeah. I have.”
“Why?”
Not a question. A demand. She’s done waiting. I can hear it in the single word. The patience she’s been holding together for days has run out, and what’s left is Vi, direct, unfiltered, and refusing to let me off the hook.
I don’t answer. I close the distance between us instead until I’m right behind her, close enough to smell her hair. Close enough that she can feel the heat coming off me.
She goes still and the papers in her hand stop moving.
I put my hand on her hip. Just my hand. Just resting there, fingers curved around the bone, my thumb on that strip of bare skin where her shirt rode up. The contact is minimal. The effect is not. My pulse is hammering. Hers is too. I can see it in her throat.
“Sting.”
“Don’t talk.”
She turns around slowly, her back against the filing cabinet, my hand on her waist, with about six inches between us.
Her eyes, Christ, her eyes are so focused, looking straight into me.
Unlike me, there’s no armor or strategy.
Just Vi, waiting, daring me to either close the gap or walk away. Shit or get off the pot.
I bring my other hand up. My thumb traces her cheekbone, runs along the faint scar where the cut from the east wing has healed. She leans into my palm, her eyes closed. When they open, they’re wet. Not crying. Just of whatever she’s been carrying while I’ve been avoiding her.
“I can’t do this,” I say.
“Can’t do what.”
“This. The distance. I can’t—”
The sentence falls apart. I don’t have an end for it.
I don’t have the words for what I’m trying to say because I’m an idiot.
I can’t keep avoiding you. I can’t keep carrying what I found in those papers alone.
I can’t be in the same building as you and not touch you.
I can’t look at you without wanting to tell you all that.
None of that comes out. What does happen is my mouth on hers.
It’s not the way it was in the corridor outside the Skylight Room when she came back bleeding and I lost my mind. This is slower with her back against the cabinet, my mouth moving against hers. I pull back, breathing hard, her hand still on my chest.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I say.
“Then tell me.”
I close my eyes. The words are right there. Your father was clean. The Rot is built on stolen money. I’ve known for over a week. Three sentences. I could say them right now with my forehead against hers and it would be over. I open my mouth.
Nothing.
The words don’t come. They’re stuck in my throat and I wish they would just choke me to death. Vi is waiting, giving me room and more grace than I deserve.
I step back and drop my hand, the loss of contact visceral. She feels it too, I can see from the way her body leans toward me before she catches herself.
She looks at me and I can see her deciding something. Whether to push. Whether to grab me and shake me. Whether to walk away. She turns back to the filing cabinet and picks up where she left off, shoving papers into drawers. “Don’t take too long,” she says, not looking at me.
I stand there for another few seconds, watching her file papers and wanting to cross the distance between us. Like a fucking asshole, I leave instead.