Caught but not caged.
So no, I don’t bolt like a gazelle on the savannah.
I freeze…maybe like a gazelle on the savannah.
But maybe also like a woman who’s finally ready to grasp on to the future.
“You have dinner plans?” I ask when he’s close.
And get to watch the pleased surprise travel through his face. “Yes.”
“Oh,” I say, disappointment sliding through me. Is it possible I’ve misread?—
A tug on my ponytail. “With you.”
Heat on my cheeks…warmth in my belly.
“Want me to order something?” he asks, snagging my bag from my shoulder and walking toward the apartment building, leaving me with no choice but to follow him. “Since you’ve had a day?” he tosses over his shoulder when I get close again, and my breath catches at the sparks of gold in his eyes.
They’re beautiful.
Kind of like the man himself.
A man I haven’t allowed myself to notice.
Because if I did, I might…
“My day wasn’t that bad,” I say as we climb the stairs side-by-side.
“It was bad enough to make you cry,” he points out and he’s not wrong.
“That was more of an adrenaline letdown from nearly skidding off the road,” I say dryly.
I expect him to chuckle.
Instead, when he’s silent and I look up at him, I find he’s scowling.
“What?”
His scowl deepens but he just nods toward my apartment door, silently indicating I unlock it. I input the code, hear the quiet whir as it disengages, then twist the handle and push it open.
“What?” I ask again when he just waves a hand, dispatching another silent order—this one for me to go inside.
I only listen because I want to know what’s put the scowl on his face.
But at some point (soon), he’ll need to cool it on the commands—silent or otherwise.
“That was really dangerous,” he grinds out, closing and locking the door behind him.
I feel something in me catch, a flicker of awareness that Colt is the first man I’ve been alone with in my apartment that isn’t my brother, that he’s the first man I’ve been alone with like this since I opened the door and let Dylan in all those years before.
Pausing, I wait for the panic to come, to flood through my nerves and overpower my thoughts, my place in the present, yanking me fiercely back into the past.
Instead…
I’m still here.
And now I’m left wondering why Colt has gone so still, so tense.
