Chapter Twelve
Twelve
It felt like it had to have been just a dream.
And even more so when she went to knock on the bathroom door in the morning, just to say she was desperate to pee, and it swung open so abruptly it made her make a little sound.
Then there he was, looking like his usual annoyed-at-everything self.
Hair an angry tangle, clothes furiously rumpled.
Face like fucking thunder.
There was just no way this man had touched her.
She was hard-pressed to even believe that he had said some of the stuff he had, or seemed so disturbed by her friendly front.
And those things had actually definitely happened.
He had really almost confessed he wanted a family, in that gut-wrenchingly desperate sort of tone.
That was enough on its own.
Anything more was too much. Impossible. A hallucination brought on by close contact with someone she hated, and who hated her. Or so it seemed, until they started toward the exit of the hotel. Him grumbling about the coffee he had just snagged, her thinking of a good way to poke fun at him for it.
In fact, she almost had it.
They were so close to being completely back to normal.
But the thing was, she was so intent on this goal that she wasn’t really paying attention.
And that meant the door out of the place almost slapped right into her, before she even realized what was happening.
She came so close to getting a bloody nose that she flinched.
She put her hands up. Then when it somehow stopped about a millimeter from her face, she automatically looked up, searching for what had jammed it.
But the only thing she saw was him.
His arm over her head, ramrod straight and so firm she could see the cords standing out on his wrist just below the cuff. The muscle above, testing the seams. And that enormous hand, splayed, white-knuckled—such obvious evidence he was angry that she didn’t even need to hear him vocalize it.
She knew before he snapped out a word.
She just assumed the word would be for her.
Watch what you’re doing, she imagined.
But it wasn’t.
“Hey,” he barked at someone just beyond her.
The guy who had let the door close in her face.
The one who jerked at the sound of that word—and extremely understandably so.
She jerked, and it wasn’t even aimed at her.
And not just because it was really fucking loud, and obviously coming out of a big guy.
It was like nothing she had ever heard before.
Almost a bellow, full of outrage and sort of broken in the middle.
The way a beast might respond at getting a sudden spear in its side, it seemed to her.
But she had no clue how that went with what had happened, and what he had done.
Nobody had done anything to him. Nobody had even done anything to her, really.
A stranger had just been slightly rude.
And sure, Miller hated people being slightly rude.
It was the kind of thing she had seen him do before.
Telling people not to cut a line, dropping tips on tables none had been left on, demanding apologies from people who had wronged someone.
In fact, it was one of the things she had been drawn to.
A guy had interrupted a girl talking in class, and he had told him to pipe down.
But that didn’t mean this was what he was doing here.
It just sort of made her react like he was, for reasons she couldn’t really explain.
He’s into people following common courtesy, regardless of who they’re following the common courtesy for, she told herself.
But her heart started thumping over that sound he made, anyway.
And it thumped even harder when he put his free hand in front of her body and sort of …
suggested with it that she should move back.
Behind him, she realized, as he maneuvered himself in front.
Between her, and the guy who had let the door go. The one who was red-faced and blustering now, and saying, “What’s your problem, pal?”
“You are, dipshit,” Miller said. “That how a man behaves, letting a door go on a lady like that?” And when he did, she did her best to be normal about it.
She really and truly gave it her all. But it seemed like maybe that handshake had broken something in her, because somehow she just couldn’t get there.
She got all flustered instead.
Her face went red; she tried to speak but nothing but a breathless sound came out. She had to cough before she could say anything normal. “It’s fine, honestly, Miller,” she tried, but oh wow, she wished she hadn’t. Because the words themselves were good, they were fine. They made sense.
But the sound of them was mortifying.
Her voice went up and down like a drunk on a pogo stick.
It almost seemed like she hiccupped in the middle.
Even the dipshit looked at her like what’s going on with you—though if Miller noticed, he didn’t say.
He just insisted on an apology, and once the guy had sense enough to offer one and flee, that was it.
He started out in the direction of the truck, as if nothing had ever happened.
Which she supposed it hadn’t, really. It wasn’t a big deal, not at all.
It just affected her as if it were. She was still flustered when she got to the truck. Agitated, almost, to the point where even putting her seat belt on felt like a frustrating task. She yanked it and it jammed, and then she yanked it even harder, and it jammed even harder than that.
She was about to give up when he reached across.
Slowly, very slowly. A little hesitant, maybe.
And watching her carefully, as he made the move—as if he expected her to slap him for it at any second.
Even though she could barely move at all.
She realized what he was doing and just froze up, so thoroughly she felt pretty sure she wasn’t even breathing.
Five seconds in and her lungs were on fire.
And she knew she was watching him weirdly.
That her eyes were like moons, as he leant so close she could smell his aftershave or his soap or his shampoo or whatever it was that drifted off his body and into her.
Something far too clean and sweet, in a way that made her think of a razor drawing over stubble.
She even found herself looking at his throat.
The curve of it, near smooth until it got to the bristle along his jawline.
So tender seeming, in a manner that really should have held her attention.
But it couldn’t, it couldn’t, because something else was going on right at that moment.
His throat moved, as she watched. He swallowed, very visibly.
Like this was nerve-racking for him, too, maybe.
Even though that seemed mad.
He wasn’t the sort, she thought.
But his hands shook just a little, as he took her seat belt out of her hands, careful but firm.
And he drew it across her body all in one quick motion, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
Though if she were being honest, it didn’t feel that way to her.
It felt like agony. It felt like it took a thousand years.
By the time he finished she was on the verge of begging him to stop.
But even more horrifying:
When he finally pulled away, she had a different urge altogether.
To beg him not to move away. The words come back, do it again, don’t stop popped into her head, unbidden.
Despite how much they made her face heat, just to imagine them.
She wasn’t even sure what they meant, or why they were there in her head.
She only knew that they were, and that they continued to be as he just carried on.
He put on his own seat belt. Started the engine. Set off toward the next venue in the center of town.
Weirder, in fact: he reached for the radio—most likely to puncture the apocalyptically tense silence—and when the shipping news garbled out of the speakers he shot her a look.
A sort of wince. Then for some inexplicable reason, he switched to whatever he had in the CD player.
Casually, like he wasn’t really doing anything at all.
But it certainly felt like he was, once the music was playing.
It was the exact song she had tried to sing, somehow.
Only so much sweeter and finer than she had remembered it being, so much more haunting.
The words am I in the frame from your point of view poured out of the speakers in one plaintive wave, rattling her bones as it went.
Filling the car, to the point where it was all she could hear or feel.
Do you feel the same, Roan sang, about eighty thousand fucking times.
She almost missed some old guy droning about boats.
At least she could tune that out. She couldn’t even tune this out via answering uncomfortable emails to news stations by pretending to be his lawyer, or lying to the apparent head of Harchester Publishing that everything was under control, or realizing that Beck and Alfie and Hazel and Mabel and Mabel’s buddy Berinder had tried to call her about twenty-seven times.
I think they might be my friends, she found herself thinking.
A remarkable thing, considering the fact that she’d never really had friends in her life.
But even that glimmer of light couldn’t help her shake the horrors that were currently closing in.
Roan was now singing about getting eaten out in the passenger seat of a car.
And for some reason, each time she sang it, Daisy’s face heated.
She had to fight the urge to crack a window.
To shift uncomfortably every five seconds, in a way he was definitely going to notice.
You got ants in your pants, she imagined him saying, and somehow blushed even harder. And all that was before she noticed what he was doing. Her gaze skittered across to him, against her will, and there it was: those thick fingers of his, tapping the wheel. Rhythmically. Almost jauntily.
Definitely in time with the music.
Then even more astonishing, he muttered something under his breath.
Only it wasn’t muttering. Dear god, it wasn’t muttering at all. “Are you singing?” she blurted out. Too much like an accusation, she knew. But the strangest part was, he took it like one. He took it like one, and looked affronted by this. Outraged, even—as if this were all normal.
“Don’t say it like it’s weird,” he had the nerve to say.
And really that was just the last straw in a series of many of them.
“Well, usually it wouldn’t be, but when you’re the one doing it there’s no other way to put it. You don’t even like reading out poetry. I once saw you threaten Professor Dunderson for trying to make you.”
“Oh, come on, that was hardly a threat.”
“You said, I will set fire to your whiteboard.”
“Yeah, and I could have said set fire to your head, but I restrained myself.”
He nodded on the end of that. As if to say, There, that’s settled.
She had no idea why on earth he would think so, however.
“This is not making your claim that singing is normal for you any stronger.”
“Look. I just thought if I did it, you would feel more okay about doing it.”
What the fuck, her brain spat out.
She only managed to rein herself in by the skin of her teeth.
“Miller, that is even more inexplicable than you just doing it on your own. Last time I sung in front of you, you looked at me like I was the ghost of a girl you murdered for enjoying music too much.”
“Well,” he said. “It’s different now.”
“How is it?”
“I’m trying to do bett— I mean, I have to show everyone that I’m better. Like I said last night. Like I said about being gentle with you. So everyone would be, you know. Fooled. Fooled into thinking I really want to be.”
She looked at him then. She had to, because the words he was saying made sense. They explained everything he had done that morning. Maybe even explained everything the night before. But there was something slightly off about them at the same time. Something she couldn’t place.
His face told her nothing, however.
He didn’t even glance back at her. His eyes stayed on the road, steady and sure. No need to impress the truth of what he had said on her with a stern look. He even took a swig of his coffee halfway through her assessing look. Grimaced, as if his main concern was how shitty it was.
Not her. Not this.
She was reduced to picking holes in it.
“But there’s nobody here to see you,” she said.
And all she got was a lift of his shoulder.
“I told you, I need practice.”
“So that’s all this is, then.”
“What else would it be?”
She cringed at that.
Scrabbled for a reply.
“Nothing, I just—” she started to say, head full of a thousand things he could have been assuming.
That she was daft enough to imagine he meant the hand on the door and the seat belt and the singing.
That there was something soft behind them, instead of steely.
Or worse: that she liked the idea that there was.
I want us to be more, she imagined him thinking she thought and almost died of relief when he cut her off with something that assumed the opposite. “You feel like it’s too much,” he said. Though, of course, that came with its own problems.
She couldn’t let him think any of this was overwhelming her, either.
“No. No, no, of course not.”
“It’s bothering you. It feels weird.”
“Not at all. Not even a little bit.”
“So I could go harder and you’d be fine.”
Fuck, she thought. Went and trapped yourself there.
But there was nothing she could do about it now. Say no, and it would seem like she wasn’t fine at all. Say yes, and god only knew what he was going to do next. Knee deep in the passenger seat, Roan sang, and this time it didn’t just make her cheeks heat. It made her whole body heat.
Of course it did.
She pictured it then.
Just a flash of it—her hand splayed on the window, the curve of his denim-clad back, that dark shaggy hair between her legs.
But a flash was enough to fill her with some very horrifying feelings.
She had to think of a bunch of ex-boyfriends fumbling and bumbling and forcing her to do things she didn’t really want to, to make it fade.
And just in time, too, because he was looking at her now.
He was waiting for the only answer she could give.
“Absolutely. Do whatever you want. Say whatever you want. Be however you want. It won’t matter to me,” she said, far too loud and cheery about it. False seeming, it felt to her. But he didn’t seem to take it that way.
He took it like it was a done deal.
Doing whatever he wanted to her from now on—no matter how affectionate or tender seeming—was how it was going to be. Just as tender affection from him felt like the end of her fucking world.