“Your hair isn’t naturally pink.” My words slipped out before I could think any better of it.
Colette’s grin only deepened. “What? Pale pink hair doesn’t scream ‘I’m totally not having a mental breakdown’?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you thought it.” She slipped down from the counter, padding closer to where I sat crouched over the small sterno.
I swallowed, forcing my attention back to the sterno. The eggs didn’t need me, but they were a convenient excuse to avoid the gravity of her presence.
“Maybe I thought it,” I muttered.
She was perched at the edge of the mattress now, close enough that the heat from her body brushed my arm. My pulse ticked faster, loud in my ears. I tried to remember to breathe evenly.
Tried.
“You know,” she said softly, “you could look up once in a while. Might make cooking more interesting.”
“Cooking is not a spectator sport,” I replied, but my voice sounded thinner than I intended. Her fingers twitched, idly tracing a fold in the blanket draped over her knees. Just thatmotion, that smallalmostintimacy, made the back of my neck prickle.
“Are you always this tense?” She asked, grin still playing on her lips. “Or am I special?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted to — wanted to say yes, wanted to tell her she hadno ideawhat she’d done to me with that glance, that grin, that careless proximity — but I flipped the eggs again, ignoring how she seemed to creep closer still.
She leaned a little closer. “You’re going to watch me eat breakfast like a hawk, aren’t you?”
“I’m… attentive,” I said, giving her the barest hint of a smirk.
“That’s terrifying,” she whispered, eyes glittering.
I ignored the shiver that went straight down my spine at the sound of her voice, soft and teasing, and focused on flipping an egg. My hand shook a fraction. My chest felt too tight.
“You’re pale,” I said finally. The words were random. A deflection. Anything to stop thinking about how warm she was, how alive, how impossiblypresentin my little world.
“What?”
“You’re pale. Your skin. It—” I cleared my throat, muttering nonsense. “Never mind.”
Her laugh filled the cabin, light and chaotic, and it was a shock to the system — like a hand pressed against my ribs I didn’t want to let go of.
Her hand.
I turned slightly toward the fire, letting the light dance over her face, pretending it was the flames, not the way she had me cornered in the middle of the morning without touching me at all.
The heat between us was subtle, simmering, dangerous. And I had no intention of addressing it. I handed her the plate, trying to look casual, as if carrying hot eggs across the mattress edge wasn’t an ordeal of self-control.
She took it with one hand, fingers brushing against mine. I froze — just a fraction of a second, but long enough that she caught it.
“You’re twitchy,” she said, voice teasing, eyes sharp. “Do I make you nervous?”
“Not at all,” I said, and the words came out far too flat. Too quick.
Her grin widened. “Sure. Definitely not. You’re just… observant. Intensely, awkwardly, impossibly observant.”
I ignored her, returning to the stove. Focused on the eggs. The sterno. Anything but the fact that she was sitting so close, heat rolling off her like she belonged here, like she belongedtooclose.
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, studying the plate like she was going to critique my technique. “You flipped that perfectly. Very domestic. Did you do a lot of… domestic things?”
“No,” I said, voice even gruffer than intended. “I… live alone.”
