Page 24 of The Storm

But I do.

And it’s getting harder and harder to tell myself I don’t.

It’s not just his throat. It’s the way the collar of his shirt is loose, a few buttons undone, exposing the hollow. It’s his long fingers wrapped around the champagne glass. The way he tips his head back.

The way my pulse spikes involuntarily.

There are a million reasons why this fascination with him is a terrible idea. The assessing, calculating way he looks at me makes me feel small, and the way his eyes sometimes go flat and unreadable when somebody mentions my name does not bode well. Whatever lives between us is the furthest thing from simple. It’s not just curiosity. It’s friction.

I watch him watch me the way you’d eye a storm rolling in—wary, already calculating the damage, held in place by horrified fascination.

He’s closed off, all his walls up. He says things that sound harmless until you think them over and realize they aren’t. His smiles never reach his eyes, and there are moments when there’s unmistakable spite in them. And still, underneath it all, there’s that current. That pull. The hostility rolls off him in waves, yet somehow the urge to step into the storm anyway is getting harder and harder to resist.

“What about you? Did you make any New Year’s promises?” I ask when the thoughts get too loud and overwhelming.

“No.”

I wait, but he doesn’t elaborate.

“Any plans?” I ask just for the sake of asking. I don’t expect a real reply at this point. Nothing with any substance, at least. Talking to him while he’s so clearly annoyed by me is a form of entertainment of sorts. A bit of self-inflected torture, too.

Being around him turns me into a mess of confusing thoughts and intentions.

“Another year in purgatory,” he says.

“A roof over your head and a welcoming family? It’s truly the worst.”

His eyes settle on me. Where half the time it feels like he looks right through me, I now get the full force of all his attention.

“A welcoming family,” he drawls, and every syllable sounds mocking.

I clench my jaw.

“That’s nice,” he continues with the same mocking tone.

“Is it?” I ask impatiently when once again he leaves the thought unfinished even though he clearly has more to say.

“Are you?” he asks.

I feel like this would be a good time to walk away and extract myself from this conversation. “Am I what?”

He leans toward me until our faces are only separated by an inch of space, eyes moving up and down slowly and thoroughly. “Welcoming.”

Only, the way he says it… I’m not sure I’m going to find what he has in mind funny.

“I see you, Blue,” he says.

I try to swallow, but my throat is too thick.

“The way you look at me.”

It’s the first time he’s acknowledged point-blank that he’s aware.

Waves of hot and cold wash through my insides. Apprehension and embarrassment and something that feels too much like suddenly being exposed under a spotlight I wasn’t aware was on me. The realization that every look I thought I’d got away with, every moment I let my guard slip and curiosity get the better of me—he noticed. He cataloged it. Kept it.

My pulse stutters with the horrified realization that all of those moments, hundreds of them…They’re not mine anymore.

Now they’re something he can use.