Page 57 of Brutal
Delaney moves toward the nearest open set of doors. I go with her.
Inside, the car is crowded enough to make distance impossible but not enough to swallow us whole. She ends up near the center doors and reaches for the vertical pole as the train lurches back into motion. I step in close and grab her arm before the shifting car can throw her off balance.
Her back is close to the pole now. Not pinned. But there’s nowhere for her to go that doesn’t involve moving through me.
“You don’t get to corner me because you know something,” she says.
I exhale sharply. “You think I’m cornering you?”
“Aren’t you?”
The train rocks hard over a turn. Her body shifts toward mine for half a second. The contact is brief.
It still lands. Still makes me want what I can’t have.
Strike that.
What I won’t let myself have. I can have anything I fucking want. I can take her right now in this crowded subway car, and no one would dare say a thing.
“Delaney,” I say, “you have no idea what you’re standing next to.”
“Then tell me.” She licks her lower lip.
Fuck. That small movement almost undoes me.
I tighten my grip on her arm enough to make my point.
“Something was opened that night,” she says. “Or something was sealed.”
Damn. This woman isn’t just smart. She’s cunning.
“You already know that,” I say. “Interesting. You’re a talented researcher. You just don’t know which it was.”
“And you do?”
“Yes.”
“Then why not tell me?” she asks.
Because once I do, there’s no way back for either of us.
Because if you see the whole shape of that night, you see me in it.
Because I’m already standing too close to you for a man who should be keeping his distance.
I don’t say any of that.
Instead I look at her mouth.
I shouldn’t.
But I do.
The train slows for the next stop. Bodies shift around us. A man brushes past my shoulder on his way to the door. Somewhere farther down the car a child whines. The world keeps moving.
This moment doesn’t.
“You’re not asking the right questions,” I say.
