I hadn’t seen Huck since.
Yet here he stood, still and wary, his body a collection of sharp lines and tensed muscle. A tentative smile revealed a tiny, strangely attractive gap between his front teeth. But that smile was a lie; he was nervous. I knew him too well.
At least, I used to.
The fog around my brain cleared, and I blinked lashes damp with unshed tears. The little earthquake inside my chest had leveled small villages and toppled trees, and I now stood in the clearing dust, waiting to assess the damage.
“Been a while,” he said, sounding perfectly breezy. Lie.
“More than a year.”Since you left us. Since you broke my heart.
“One year, four months, nine days.”
A small noise escaped my mouth. He’d been keeping count?
His shrug was barely perceptible. “It was your birthday. Easy enough day to remember, isn’t it?”
“Right. Yes. Easy to remember,” I said dumbly, unable to look at him directly in the eyes. “How...? What are you even doing here?”
As if a switch had been flicked, all the tightness suddenly left his limbs, and he was casual and loose. Transformed. His old devil-may-care self. Maybe he wasn’t as anxious as I’d thought; maybe that was only me.
Nonchalant as could be, he tilted his head to the side and shook his earlobe to clear out water, one eye squeezed shut. “Well, IthoughtI knew, but the way you’re scowling and threatening physical violence upon me with that book of yours makes me think I’ve committed a crime.”
I floundered, lost for words. It was as though it was the most natural thing in the world for him to show up in my hotel room halfway across the globe. Maybe I’d somehow hit my head, and all of this was some kind of brain-injury fantasy. If I blinked enough, maybe he’d disappear.
But he didn’t.
“Huck?” I finally managed.
“Yes, banshee?”
I wanted to tell him not to call me that anymore. It felt too intimate, too painful, like my heart was being pierced with tiny needles.Breathe, I told myself.Steel spine, chin high. Steel spine, chin high...
“You’re in Northern Ireland,” I said.
“Am I?” He pretended to look around the room. “Funny. Thought this was Istanbul. Or Stamboul? What are they calling it these days? Used to be Constantinople, didn’t it? I was never good at history, if your memory serves,” he said, mouth quirking upward. “Cut your hair, I see.”
I huffed out a soft laugh, frustrated by the absurdity of such a trivial thing while simultaneously being drawn into his overconfident charm. My Achilles’ heel.
“You let yours go wild,” I said.
“Should’ve seen me an hour ago. Reckon I looked like a cave troll. Took half an hour to shave my face,” he said with good humor, stroking his jaw.
He looked impossibly older. The same... but different. A boy’s smile. A man’s body. The little earthquake in my chest rumbled again; it was a wonder I was still standing.
“More than your hair has changed,” he said, eyes roaming over my hips. “Quite a lot.”
“Watch it...,” I warned, feeling self-conscious but trying to sound irritated.
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Not a straight and narrow lane anymore, are you?”
“I’ll gladly punch that freshly shaven jaw of yours if you say another word about my hips, Huxley Gallagher!”
“Steady now... It was a compliment. They’re very nice hips—hey, whoa!” he said, backing away with one hand up. “Guess that hot blood of yours is the one thing that hasn’t changed. Let’s start over again. What about a simple ‘Hello, Huck; good to see you’?”
“Why am I seeing you at all?” I said, exasperated. “What are you doing in Istanbul, much less my room? How did you get here?”
“Well, let’s see. I drove all day from Tokat.”
