Page 64 of Reckless
The wind moved between us.I turned to her mouth because I had made that mistake enough times now that it no longer felt accidental.
Her lips parted slightly.Awareness between us moved from managed to volatile in the space of one shared breath.I stepped closer before I could decide whether that was wise.
“Xerses.”
The warning in my name interested me.
I lowered my voice.“You told your friends not to discuss us in front of me.”
“Yes.”She said without anything else.
I brushed her hand.“Why.”
She stared.I held it.Finally she said, “Because I’m not going to stand there while everyone acts like I need to be talked into my own choices.”
Kelly didn’t want the weekend argued in front of me because she had committed to it and refused to look uncertain once she had.I respected it.
“You’re very good at that,” I said.
“At what.”Her face altered.
“At deciding your life.”
“Don’t make that sound like a compliment,” she said quietly.
“Why.”
“Because then I might accidentally enjoy your attention.It becomes a whole thing.”
I looked at her.The wind lifting her hair.The line of her throat.The bare flash of vulnerability she had not wrapped up in wit quickly enough.The drink still in her hand because maybe she needed something to hold or maybe she liked making me think about her mouth around the rim of the glass.
My body made a decision before the rest of me had fully signed off on it.
I reached up and took the glass from her hand and set it on the stone railing behind her.
Then I looked down at her and said, “I see you.”
She didn’t move.Neither did I.
The room behind us still existed.Laughter, voices, the low pulse of family life.But distance had opened around us anyway, the kind that happened when two people became too aware of the same thing at once and everything else lost clarity.
Kelly swallowed.My attention caught there.
Her hand came up, not to push me back, to rest lightly against the front of my shirt for one unstable second as if confirming I was there and this was happening and that was somehow the worst possible thing she could have done to my concentration.
“Xerses,” she said again.
I lowered my head the slightest fraction, enough to make the possibility obvious.
I closed my eyes, but then, because Charlie was a plague sent by God to stop me from kissing her, his voice cut through the terrace from behind us.“Okay.Nope.That’s too much eye contact for people allegedly dating only six weeks.Maman needs rings on fingers to tolerate public kissing.”
Kelly jerked back so fast her shoulder hit the railing.I turned.
Charlie stood in the doorway with Hope under one arm and a grin that deserved violence.
Kelly snatched her glass off the railing and shoved it back into my hand like it had become evidence.
“Your family,” she muttered, cheeks flushed, “is too nosy.”
