Chapter 36
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
I can hear an office chair squeak, like he’s sitting up for this. “And who might this be?”
“It’s Sloane,” I reply. “From the?—”
“I know, I know. It’d be best not to announce our business over a cell phone.” Carmine clears his throat, papers shuffling on the other end. “Where are you? Actually, don’t answer that. I’ve caught enough chatter to know you’re in deep, kid.”
My eyes flick to the sky. “Why else would I be calling?”
“To catch up?” He huffs a laugh.
I cross my arms. Uncross them. Then swallow my pride and say the words I’ve been dreading since we met at that train station in Paris and I stole his wallet. “I need your help,” I mutter.
“Wowie, never thought I’d see the day,” Carmine replies, drumming his fingers on his desk. There’s a few moments of silence where I’m regretting my apparent lapse in judgement before he speaks again. “Wherever you are, can you get a cab to London?”
“Might be a tough one,” I reply, “but I’ll make it work.”
“And don’t bother bringin’ the thief.”
My heart drops to my toes and I stand up a little straighter. “Why’s that?”
“Don’t need him.”
The hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention, I whirl on my heel to find Graham leaning against the inn, gaze trained steadily on me.
Our eyes lock. Heat floods across my chest, and I watch that outrageously distracting lock of hair fall out of place.
He tilts his head as if to ask what’s wrong.
“No. We’re a package deal,” I hear myself saying into the phone.
Partners don’t leave partners out to dry. Even if you kind of want to punch them.
Carmine sucks his teeth. “Quite the wagon to hitch yourself to, kid, but I suppose he’s not entirely useless.”
“You’d be right.” A small smile tugs onto my lips. “For once.”
“Hey, we don’t know each other like that yet, alright?”
“Fine, fine.”
Even though I know, without a doubt, it’ll be the last time I’ll ever admit he’s right.
The light-grey clouds have roiled themselves into a strange, pewter color streaking across the sky. I’m huddled outside the inn, Graham’s jacket wrapped tightly around my middle, wishing we were staying the night instead of heading into another expensive cab ride.
But it’s not a vacation.
The Consultant is looming as close as the clouds, unseen but breathing down our necks all the same. And if Raffaele hasn’t discovered that his entire Epsilon team is either dead or on the run, he will soon—making me the only person left to pay.
Which is a really longwinded way to explain my terrible mood.
Graham’s inside settling our bill, after we ate our way through half the breakfast menu. At separate tables. Trading loaded glances the entire time.
Oh, yeah, that’s the other reason I’d rather be basically anywhere else right now.
There was that mission in Novosibirsk, Siberia, in the dead of winter, when I got frostbite and almost lost a finger. Or when I had to fake my own drowning to escape captivity from the Somali pirates—a rather large inconvenience, that. Tucson, Arizona in August left much to be desired as well.
When I say anywhere else, I mean it with every fiber of my being.
Graham appears at my shoulder and the door whines shut behind him. He clears his throat.
“What seems to be the problem?” I ask preemptively.
Rubbing the back of his neck, he winces and says, “The taxi service called back. There appears to be quite the storm developing off the coast, and…”
I press both palms to my eyes and groan. “We can’t have another setback.”
“I’m not sure there’s a solution here.”
“There’s always hitchhiking.”
Graham sticks his arm out beside my head like a kickstand, and I’m suddenly enveloped in his cologne. What does this man do to always smell good? “We both know that’s not any less dangerous than hiding out here until the storm passes,” he replies.
My eyes dart to his before falling to his lips like a bad habit. I scoot away, face burning, acting as if I’m pacing in order to think. “So, we stay here, then it’s off to London as soon as the weather’s cleared,” I reason. “You’ll stay with Carmine at the Legal Attaché, and I’ll?—”
“I’m going to do what?”
The cobblestone scrapes as I come to a halt and slowly turn back to him. “It’s only logical that you’ll stay at the Embassy while I?—”
“While you what, Sloane?” He shoves off the wall and approaches, brows furrowed, but I’m too fast.
I step away from The Riverside, away from Graham, away from what feels like is encroaching on the main issue between us. Except he’s right behind, stubborn as ever, tread particularly loud while he stalks after me, legs longer and stride wider.
“Leave me alone,” I snap over my shoulder, half-jogging out of the village.
“Not until you tell me what you meant.”
The wind’s as angry as the sky, wrenching my hair side to side and cutting straight to the bone.
I maneuver down a small hill and come to the edge of the riverbank, where the grass is lush and the water is sloshing and turbulent against the rocks.
I feel the first rain drop, tiny and piercing, land on my nose when Graham speaks again.
“I thought you said we were partners.”
There’s something small and fragile in his voice. Wavering, unsure, as if I’m talking to the version of him who spent so many years on his own. It’s almost enough to soften my shell. Almost.
“We are,” I reply, “right now. But soon, we’ll have to stop running and fight back.”
He sidles into my line of vision, mouth clamped shut, casting angry, rippling lines on his profile. “And then what? You go off to save the day, right?”
The sardonic edge makes me roll my eyes. “I thought we moved past this argument.”
“So did I,” he cuts back, “but I suppose it’s still Sloane against the world.”
My chin tips up with a humorless laugh. “Oh, that’s classic—you can do no wrong, can you?”
“I—” Graham’s expression falters. “—I’m not sure what you mean.” A cluster of raindrops fall on my cheeks when my hands fly up and push him backward. He stumbles for a half-second, regaining his footing quickly. “What was that for?”
“I always thought you were arrogant,” I snap, “but I never took you for an idiot.” I storm away, fat droplets of frigid rain landing on my scalp, pattering with increasing speed and darkening the dirt road.
This is fine, I reassure myself.
Of course, I’ve never been on the unreciprocated end of one-sided affections, but it’s far from being hog-tied and left to die in the desert. No—I think as the rain falls harder and the ocean swells and crashes in the distance—this is much worse.
Perhaps the embarrassment is what’s making this feel as though I’m losing blood at a dangerous rate.
Graham didn’t know how to respond to his supposed partner throwing herself at him last night, in front of an audience, no less. He’s a nice guy. He’s been trying to figure out how to set me straight and let me down easy, and maybe increase his chances of walking away with all his fingers intact.
Is this what rejection feels like?
I’ve never known, because I’ve never cared enough. Maybe pursuing that warm, normal life actually isn’t worth the kind of pain that’s worse than being stabbed. Yeah, I think I’d rather be stabbed.
My heart’s pounding and the buzzing has returned to my ears when I reach the end of the pathway and turn onto a stone jetty, lined with rowboats, that reaches halfway into the river.
I can see the mouth of the river from here, where the slate-colored water meets the churning blue-green of the ocean and stretches into a murky horizon.
The end of the jetty narrows to a point, but I stand on it anyway despite the rain-slick rock.
“What are you doing—” a voice startles me.
And the thing is, I’m rarely startled.
My knees wobble and my boot catches on the uneven stone when I move to turn, the other sliding on a particularly mossy bit and disappearing out from under me. Both arms fly out to balance me as I’m now swaying on one leg like a flamingo.
Two hands grip my shoulders and wrench me backward.
“Hey!” I shout, twisting in Graham’s arms and pushing him away for the second time that day.
His eyes narrow. “You almost fell.”
“But I didn’t.”
Graham observes me for a moment, gaze flicking to the water behind me, arms crossed. “Nevermind, I shouldn’t have followed you,” he says. That’s when I notice that blasted lock of hair, near-black and soaking wet, weeping onto his cheek.
My stomach does a traitorous flutter.
“Yeah, you shouldn’t have.”
I sound like I’m eight-years-old, but it’s the last defensive maneuver I have up my sleeve—petulance. I’m pushing him away with my words and my fists, the feebleness inside begging and pleading to make him stay. I lose either way. I’m being torn in two.
Sentimentality is a weakness, Raffaele’s voice slithers through my mind.
I want to scream. How could something so terrifying be considered weakness?
Graham’s shoulders slump. He pushes both hands through his hair and sighs. “Just… be careful,” he says, angling his body to leave.
“I don’t need you to keep me safe,” I snap.
The muscles of his back, highlighted by the soaking sweater clinging to his skin, go rigid. He turns, the sound dampened by rain and waves, a hard glint in his eyes as he takes a step closer and speaks. “I know you don’t, Sloane—that’s never been the problem.”
My mouth has suddenly gone dry.
“I’m more than happy to stand back and watch you save the day,” Graham says, “because you’re strong, and capable, and the bravest person I’ve ever known.
” He glances up at the sky, throat bobbing.
His face is glistening from the tempest above when he looks back at me.
“But you’re also bloody stubborn. You’re petulant, and temperamental, and I could swear sometimes you disagree with me just for the fun of it. ”
I scowl and shove his chest, but this time, he doesn’t move an inch. “Get out of the way, Graham.”
“No, I won’t let you leave.”
His words are a life-saving balm that I’m stubbornly refusing. I’m self-destructing, ripping myself apart until all that’s left is that small, weak voice.
“Then I’ll make you,” I snap.
I lift my hands to push him again. The last resort of a desperate, scared woman. He grabs them with impressive speed, tugging gently until his lips are pressed against my knuckles. My body, perfidious companion that it is, melts on impact and refuses to obey any further commands.
“Sloane,” he murmurs, pulling my arms around his neck and tucking wet hair behind my ears.
His arm snakes around my waist, just as it did last night, and I’m fused to him as if I never left.
“I’m not here because of what you can do for me—I only want to be here, a safe place for you to land when you’re done saving the world.
You can be the hero for everyone else, mon amour, but to me you are so much more. ”
“I know you’re lying,” I whisper, barely audible above the gusts of wind. My lungs struggle for air. “Because I represent everything you hate. Your mother, she?—”
“Must I say it in a different language? French? Dutch? Italian?”
My throat works, but I’ve officially lost all ability to speak. I’m hanging on his next words like they’re a tank of oxygen and I’m in a burning building. All my defenses have crumbled, and I choose to stay, to remain in easy mark for the pain should he choose to inflict it.
How can vulnerability possibly be considered weakness?
“You are more than what you’ve done,” he continues.
“More than the things you’ve seen or the pain you’ve felt.
Out of all the women in the world—from New Zealand to Spain, Brazil to France—you captivate me in a way that a work of art never has.
I’ll follow you wherever you go, Sloane, if only for a glance or a smile. ”
His thumb reaches up to trace my jaw, and I shiver, hypnotized by the intensity of his dark gaze.
“So, if you tell me to leave, I’ll go,” Graham murmurs, gaze falling to my lips and dragging back to my eyes. “But I needed you to know, before we part ways, that this is exactly where I want to be.”
“I don’t want you to go,” I breathe, more instinct than anything else.
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t want you to kiss me and then act like it never happened.
” I take a step forward, almost flush against him, peering up through wet lashes.
“And I need you to continue proving to me who you are, because I’ve had enough dishonesty for twelve lifetimes.
” My heart beats so wildly that I’m positive he can feel it in his chest.
But I don’t care.
Right now, chilled to the bone and beaten by rain, the threat of our enemies pressing down around us, all I can think is—this is it.
This is what’s been missing.
“I might never be able to apologize enough for the way I’ve behaved all day—an unforgivable blunder, truly,” he replies, cupping my jaw. “But perhaps I can make it up to you.”
My thoughts have careened into one another and formed one massive jumble, but I still manage to reply, “Why did you?”
“Because ever since the twelfth time you told me off—” A half-smile curls onto his mouth. “—or maybe the ninth, I decided that I would quite like to kiss you. And, to be frank, I rather wished we didn’t have an audience.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I reply quietly.
“Then allow me to clarify,” Graham whispers, the words enunciated by thundering breakers and the persistent drumming of the storm overhead. His hand reaches up to grip the back of my neck. “It was because I so desperately wanted to do this.”
He crushes my lips to his with the desperation of a man who worries it may be his last opportunity.
I’m swept off my feet—literally—when he stoops and easily lifts me into the air, bicep flexing around my ribs and my fingers tangling in his hair.
He presses me up against his firm chest, and I’m weightless and secure and irrevocably transformed.
Graham sets me down and peppers kisses along my jaw, warm breath fanning across my throat, goosebumps flourishing up my arms.
“Alright,” I say, completely breathless, “you might have another skill to add to your list.”
“I’m flattered,” he murmurs against my neck.
A clap of thunder sounds, followed by a streak of lightning in the sky. I move to extricate myself from his arms. “We should go inside before we’re killed by lightning.”
“Well, if I am killed—” Graham reluctantly releases me, but not without another searing kiss. “—then this is right where I want to be,” he mumbles into my lips.