Chapter Sixteen
The hours passed quickly. Vanka only elbowed Spiker once for snoring too loudly. She might have a second or third time, but twin boys who had boarded somewhere after Baltimore thought the sounds he made were hysterical. They weren’t wrong.
Though the train line continued through Boston, the majority of passengers prepared to disembark with them at Penn Station. Soon, as they rolled through Trenton, the cabin stirred enough to make Spiker wake up with an undignified snort. She and the twins grinned at their secret joke.
Spiker stretched and rubbed his eyes. “Man, I slept like a baby.”
The twins fell into a fit of giggles.
He glanced across the aisle. Their laughter silenced as though he’d flipped a switch. Vanka choked on her tongue to hide her laughter. Spiker’s gaze whipped between her and the boys. “I snored, huh?”
“You snored a lot,” the closer boy said, much to the mortification of his apologizing mother in the next row.
He leaned across the aisle and hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “You should hear her. Like a jackhammer in an echo chamber.”
The twins fell apart all over again as the train slowed into Penn Station and stopped under the crackling announcement that they’d arrived.
Vanka and Spiker knew the station well, and had traveled without baggage, allowing them to thread through weekend crowds and avoid bottlenecks, surfacing in the city in time for a late lunch.
“Now what?” He rested his hand on the small of her back and guided them through the chaotic mishmash of people.
Vanka wasn’t tall. She appreciated the times he acted as her personal security and cleared a path through packed sidewalks.
Today was no different. Except, gratitude for his height wasn’t her first thought.
Vanka recalled his hand on her bare back the night before, caressing the spot above where the dress had curved over her backside.
She let Spiker move them down the busy New York City street—not having a clue where they would end up—while she relived the sizzle that had burned up her spine and down to the very bottom of her stomach.
She reminisced over the moment he first saw her, how his jaw tightened and his pupils dilated.
He’d stared like a starving man presented with his favorite meal.
She’d soaked in his reaction and floated in a wispy cloud of attraction.
They stopped at the corner of West 34th and 7th. “Which way?”
“We can stay on 7th until East 42nd, then cut over to 5th Avenue.” She guessed he was trying to map their route and determine their final destination. Even if he did, he wouldn’t have any idea what would happen next.
“Sounds like a plan.”
The crosswalk light flashed and chirped, and along with a small crowd packed on the corner, they continued their journey. What should have been a twenty-minute walk doubled after they stopped for a quick bite. Finally, they arrived at their location.
“We’re at the library,” he announced at the base of the Beaux-Arts-style building, which never failed to take Vanka’s breath away. “And I have no idea why.”
His disbelief wasn’t as oh-no-almost-a-museum as she might’ve expected, and her satisfaction increased.
This was one of her favorite places to hide away and let stories pull her to places she didn’t know, and ancient times she could never visit.
But that wasn’t why she’d brought him here.
The truth was, she wasn’t sure why she’d decided to mix her two worlds. “You’ll never be able to guess.”
“I wouldn’t even try.” He climbed the first two steps onto the wide landing and waited for her to join him.
“I mean, after a three-hour train ride and a stroll through Midtown, we’ve arrived at a library.
” Spiker chuckled. “I wouldn’t try to explain this kind of boss-level hijinks unless you had my forehead in your crosshairs. ”
Despite the joke about her threatening to murder him, Spiker’s sentiments made Vanka’s stomach flutter in a way that erased everyone around them.
Gone was the man to her right, lost in a book while sitting on the steps.
Gone were the kids who raced up and down the upper stairs’ railing.
Right now, talking to Spiker gave her the same impossible feeling that art and stories did.
It was as if the world took a break and let her exist until she was ready to deal with its ugliness. “Off we go.”
Vanka stayed at his side. Since they’d left Penn Station, she noted that they walked closer to each other than usual.
Noticing those little things was part of her training.
She categorized hundreds of minute moments in a day, running them through an internal battery of tests.
Her and Spiker’s proximity on the bustling sidewalks wasn’t abnormal for where they had been, but it hadn’t changed now that they had plenty of space.
Their arms grazed. The touch awakened nerves that shouted she was too far away from his touch.
She focused on one of the pair of marble lions that welcomed visitors from their regal, authoritative posts. “Their names are Patience and Fortitude.”
Spiker slowed. “Which is which?”
She gestured to the south side of the stairs. “That’s Patience” —then the opposite side— “and that’s Fortitude.”
He nodded, giving her a half-grin as though he’d known she’d have the answer on hand. “Gotta have those to live in this city.”
They continued up the stairs. “The city’s mayor gave them their names during the economic downturn of the 1930s, as a reminder of what was needed to survive the hardships.” She smiled. “Some say the lions are there to remind the world to read between the lines. Lions. Lines. Get it?”
He laughed under his breath, and they paused in the shade of the grand rotunda.
Dual columns flanked their sides, and library patrons came and went.
“Before we go in,” —he backed her against a pillar, and her heart tripped in her chest— “tell me something about this place that no one knows. Something I can’t look up in a book. ”
Vanka tipped her head back to meet his stare, and when she did, she wanted to run. The pulse in her neck beat like a woolen mallet on a marching bass drum. They were too close, too personal, and she couldn’t get enough.
But he didn’t know what he was asking. Simple words had the potential to unmask a layered truth. She had to be careful and didn’t want to tread into murky water, again playing a game of semantics with assumptions and omissions. “That’s a lot to ask.”
“I don’t care.”
“Ha.” That wouldn’t be true, but Spiker wasn’t an easy person to persuade. She’d offer the most important nugget of knowledge she had that he couldn’t look up in a book. “This is the last place my parents took me before they died.”
Vanka’s revelation landed like a sucker punch to Spiker’s gut.
Dull aftershocks of questions and understanding splintered during the lifetime it took to take a step back.
He hadn’t known what the hell she might say, but he hadn’t expected anything like that.
His thoughts had been in a very different place than hers had been; her lips, her mind, and everything in between.
Shame and guilt curdled in the pit of his stomach.
“Sorry.” He swallowed hard. “I didn’t know. ”
Vanka didn’t shy away. Her expression didn’t waver. “Of course you didn’t know.”
“I, uh…” Spiker shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn’t know nearly enough about her past, which was only made more glaringly obvious by what he’d learned over the last few days.
“That’s not why I brought you here.” She put her hands on her hips as though she were ready to scold him for his reaction. “It was an answer that mostly fit the bill.”
“I wouldn’t have—” Hell, he didn’t know what to say. How old had she been? How did it make her feel? Spiker cringed inwardly and clamped a hand on the back of his neck. It took a special kind of moron to fantasize about a woman who was thinking about her dead parents. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t make this awkward,” she demanded. “I told you because I didn’t want you to look back and think, ‘Oh, wow, that was one hell of an omission.’”
He recalled their discussion about lies versus omissions, which had been about this city. He’d believed she had a connection to New York. Was this why?
“Spiker,” she snapped. “Do not act as if you’ve crapped on our day.”
His lips pursed. Easier said than done. “Okay.”
“I have been here countless times since that day. This isn’t a place of mourning.” Her spine straightened. “As a matter of fact, it’s more of a place of joy.”
Good memories or good riddance? “Okay…”
“Come on.” She snagged his arm. “Walk it off.” They turned toward the main entrance, arm in arm. The softness of her skin didn’t match her vexed tone. “I can’t believe a little family history has left you shell-shocked.”
He snorted. “I’m not shell-shocked, princess.” If anything, the longer she kept her arm in his, the more his thoughts returned to where they’d been before. That probably made him a jackass, but at least he was an honest jackass. “Simply taking it all in.”
They crossed a large, open area that Vanka could likely describe in perfect, accurate detail.
He studied it the way he would any new environment, running through the checklist that continually processed information in the back of his head: Find the exits—from the basic doors and windows to the more complicated and messy trash chutes and air ducts.
Scan the crowd—new, familiar, and out-of-place faces, people who were also scanning the crowd.
Spiker wouldn’t remember the whys and hows of the large, fancy windows that adorned the hall. Still, he could describe a scene with enough detail to make the grumpiest intel analyst give a thumbs-up.
As a corridor opened ahead of them, Vanka released her hold. “Are your parents alive?”