I can’t argue with that.I mean, I want to, but as this night plays out, as I look back with hindsight, I know if Wes had told us he was a cop he’d be dead.
Heart Eyes would’ve made a beeline for him in the basement.He wouldn’t have loitered at the end of that hallway.It’s a sobering thought.One that takes some of the wind out of my sails, makes me meet his eye, and tempts the tiniest of pulls in my chest.
“I wanted to tell you.”His voice drops to a murmur as he passes me more paper towels, and it’s nice to see my hands—to seehishands—clean and free of blood… again.“I nearly did—”
“When?”
It’s not like he couldn’t have casually dropped it into conversation at any point tonight.“Hey, Jamie, we’re the same kind of crazy.Also, I’m a cop.”
It just falls right off the tongue.
“Somany times.”He sighs, and being in his space, having that soft rasp close to my ear, there’s a good chance the only reason I haven’t gripped my rubbed-raw fingers into his collar and pulled his mouth down onto mine is pure stubbornness.
“But… Jamie, I didn’t come here tonight to—”
“To meet someone,” I say, finishing his sentence as I push away from the sink, and move back to the door.Having some distance whips up that hot air again, but it’s still conflicted.What I’m actually angry at is hazy.I should be concentrating on escaping a killer who is obsessed with me and the eventual truckload of therapy I’m going to have to go through to process all the carnage I’ve seen tonight if I survive.Instead, I’m pissed off he lied.I’m pissed off that I’m even hurt in the first place, and then there’s the other thing.
“You came here to stop more people from dying, and I know we need to concentrate on the matter at hand, which isnotadding to that count, but I can’t help but be a little pissed that you were pretending on our date.”
He squints across at me.“What do you mean ‘pretending’?”
The “what makes you happy?”question, the slow smiles, the fact any eye fucking I was doing was consensual and reciprocal.
“It was like you weretrying.”
The drawn-out grazes of his thumb on my arm when he was patching up my cut, the way he slipped into teasing me with Laurie like it was second nature.We would’ve kissed had Stu been able to pick up his feet while walking.
How has any of that helped his investigation?
Wes pauses, processes, then shakes his head slowly, as if the word itself is foreign to him.
“I definitely wasn’t ‘trying.’?”
He says it without a hint of smugness.He’s not even looking at me, but still—
“Oh,fuck off.I mean you didn’t have to act like it was a real date when it wasn’t.I actually li—”
I cut myself off before I can say it, but he is a detective, and the syllable makes him glance up from the floor.He meets my eye, and the intensity I see makes me turn and start sifting through the shelves foranything with a “flammable” logo.If not to set off the alarms, then to set myself on fire.
I’ve had enough experience with modern dating to know you hold your cards close to your chest until you’re all but forced to show them.Flirting, touching—any level of sexual touch—is fine, but admitting emotions and putting words to them that define how you feel about someone?
Borderline psychotic.
“Say what you were going to say.”
His voice sounds weighted as it travels across the small space.My hands graze more paper towels, unopened mop heads, jugs of hand soap, and a box of those napkins that were on the bar in the basement.Anything that might keep my hands busy and stop them from shaking.
“No.”
“Jamie…”
I don’t know why that makes me pause.He’s probably said my name hundreds of times tonight, but this time it grabs my heart in a chokehold.
I want to tell him.
I want to tell him, but I can’t look at him when I do.
“I… actually… like—” I switch to past tense at the last second.“—dyou.”
