Chapter Fifteen #2
It was utter nonsense, just complete balderdash.
Yet somehow, he made it sound so convincing her heart stuttered in her chest. She found herself putting a hand there, even though she knew he was looking.
He didn’t stop the moment the words were over.
In fact, he didn’t stop until the moderator asked another question.
But the question itself didn’t make things any better.
It was about when they first truly met. And he answered, he answered.
Like the lie had somehow always been inside him.
“I used to hate sleeping. Lying there, feeling things I didn’t want to feel about things I didn’t want to feel them about.
So I’d get up, go for a run. Go for a swim, wear myself out.
Drop like a ten-ton weight when I finally got back to my bed.
An ideal situation for me. But then one night, she caught me.
She found me out. And when I dared to share with her, she was as good about it as I knew she’d be.
I let myself open up to her, and she surrounded me in warmth.
I fell in love with her then. Though of course I have no clue at all why she fell in love with an oaf like me. ”
Maybe I would have done if you had opened up to me, her brain blurted out immediately.
But only because her brain was apparently running on fumes and the memory of being thoroughly fucked. He made you come once and you’re rewriting history along with him, she chided herself. Even though you have no reason for it. He’s selling a story for an audience. Who are you selling this to?
“I don’t know,” she said—entirely under her breath.
Though some lighting guy still looked at her funny.
She had to go sit in the greenroom, which in this case was more like a place where PowerPoint presentations were usually delivered.
There were stacked chairs in one corner, and a smart board on one wall, and the couch she sat on seemed brand new, courtesy of IKEA.
But it was at least empty of anyone who might see her behave weirdly.
No chipper liaison who wanted to take a picture with him doing bunny ears behind her head (which he had of course refused with one stern look).
No publicist from Harchester who clearly thought Daisy was trying to do the job Miller never actually let anyone do anyway (she suspected the woman had gone to the bar across the street).
It was just blessed silence for a good forty minutes.
Really, she should have been calm and reasonable by the time he was done.
But then he abruptly burst into the room and slammed the door behind himself before anyone else could slip through, and suddenly she was right back to square one.
Worse than square one, honestly. She saw his face, and all she could think was Okay, I totally get what he meant about being attracted to someone.
Then he spoke, and things escalated pretty steeply.
“Where did you go, I needed you,” he said.
And he took hold of her when he did it, too. For a second all she could think about was that scene in his third book, Once She Was Gone, when Dillon finally admits that it devastated him to watch her go. When he grabs her and begs her not to. She even heard a line from it in her head.
Losing you was like losing the only thing I could bear about myself.
Then he abruptly started rushing her out of the room, and the line blinked out. She almost laughed as she ran to keep up with him. “Seemed like you were fine, going on all the things you were saying,” she said to the back of his head.
But he didn’t turn.
He kept on down the glossy hallway to the golden elevator at the end.
“Exactly. I was saying things. A lot of things. I don’t even know where they were coming from. They just kept bursting out of me like someone uncorked a bottle, and I couldn’t get it to stop. Her last question was about sex, Emmett. It was about sex and I answered it.”
“What did you say?”
“That I have you twice a night.”
He said it the same way he said the rest—a little harried about it, almost scolding himself, impatient to get out of there. The only difference was: this one stopped her in her tracks. The doors of the elevator almost closed after him before she could get inside.
He had to jam a hand between them. Gesture at her, like get your butt in here.
Things are really bothering him, she thought. The fake emotion, the lovey-dovey stuff. The accidental fingering of his mortal enemy in a tent. Maybe the abrupt writing spurt was even that—a kind of lancing of some inescapable and awful feelings.
She couldn’t sugarcoat the situation, however.
“Oh my god. That is—I mean, that’s gonna be a thing.”
“Can you stop it? Can you make everybody delete their phones?”
“I think you know I cannot. But don’t worry, it’ll play well with the public.”
“It’s not really the public I’m concerned about right now.”
He’d been pacing up to that point. He stopped now. Stared at her, until she had to accept he was talking about her. Somehow, that word concerned was for her. Or at least, something about them both, and their bizarre relationship.
In a way she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about.
Just pretend it didn’t happen, she willed him, as she eked out two tight words.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem it. Disappearing like that.”
“I didn’t disappear. I needed a snack. And a sit-down.”
“Yeah, but you seem different in other ways, too. Do you think I don’t know that you do? Always sleeping in the car now, looking at me with those wild eyes. And you’re too quiet. No yammering a mile a minute, like normal.”
“Okay, first of all, everybody is a yammerer compared to you. You seem to actively resent that I even make you argue about things. And second of all, you know I have a lot on my mind right now,” she said, then gestured back in the direction of the stage he’d just come from.
Though as soon as she did it she knew that wasn’t what it sounded like.
He went very still. His face tightened.
“You mean what I did to you. In the woods.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Like you’re a monster who mauled me.”
“Well, doesn’t seem that far from the truth.”
“You can’t be fucking serious. You were gentle as anything. Not to mention the fact that you made me do something that nobody ever has before,” she said, but knew as soon as she had that she shouldn’t have put it like that. His eyes widened—briefly and only slightly, but they did.
And he straightened just a little.
Like an animal bristling.
“I shouldn’t have said that. Let’s just forget that I did,” she ordered him.
He didn’t listen. “Might be a little hard when it’s lodged in my brain like a ten-inch splinter.”
“Sorry,” she tried. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just—I didn’t expect you to—”
“Doesn’t matter why, I don’t care if you did. That’s not what struck me.”
“Then what did?” She said it loud, frustrated now. Hand slapping the ground-floor button, because seriously, why was the elevator not moving? She didn’t know, but it still refused. In fact it didn’t start up until he answered, quietly, to her turned back.
“You said nobody has.”
“That doesn’t seem like a big deal. Most women can’t.”
“But you can. You did. And you’re telling me nobody has ever made you before.”
Shit, she thought. How have I started confessing my sex life issues to him? And it showed in her flustered, red-faced attempts at explaining. “Well, usually they’re not using their hands, they’re using their … you know what. And then they don’t … I mean, they never last that long, so.”
“It took you twenty fucking seconds.”
“I think that’s an exaggeration.”
“A minute, then. At most.”
Now she was the one pacing.
“It was probably just the situation,” she said, eyes flicking up to the number above the door. Seventeen, it somehow said. Even though she was fairly sure this building didn’t have that many floors. Apparently elevators weren’t satisfied anymore with just placing her in tense situations.
They had to use wizardry to trap her there.
With a man who was now very worked up.
“The situation was fucking nothing. Hell, the situation now is even less than that and I know you’re going the same way.
Trembling and blushing over a few touches, a kind word or two, someone talking to you the way I am now.
That’s all it takes and they couldn’t even manage that much,” he said, at which point she went to scoff.
The words I’m not trembling were on the tip of her tongue.
But then she realized.
She felt it. Like a kid after a hit of sugar.
And apparently ready for another one, when he shook his head, words almost muttered under his breath. “Always thought you were getting beyond what someone like me could ever give you in the sack, and instead it’s fucking crumbs. Assholes that can’t even fuck you right.”
Because seriously, what did that mean?
She didn’t know. She only knew he wasn’t correct.
“But it’s different when it’s actual fucking.”
“You sure about that? Because, you know, we can easily test that theory out.”
“As if you’re going to do that. There’s no way you would. There’s no way you would even want to,” she said, half laughing as she did. Though she knew the laugh sounded just a little panicked. And that she was breathing way too hard now.
But even scarier:
He was breathing hard, too.
His chest was almost heaving. She watched it rise and fall underneath his denim shirt, completely mesmerized. Then she looked up and met his eyes, and oh god. The second she did, something in them just seemed to shift. The light in them sunk, and left behind a sort of soft and subtle darkness.
Realization, she wanted to call it.
But it was more than that, it was beyond that.
She felt like she was drowning in it. In fact, she was still sinking into those depths when he slowly, slowly leant to one side. Eyes still locked with hers, as he did something she couldn’t see. Something she couldn’t believe, even when her mind informed her of what it was.
And then it happened.