He was already looking at me.
Our eyes caught and held, and I should have looked away because that was the rule, the whole goddamn point of the last three days, but instead my mouth opened before my brain could catch up.
“Take a picture, it lasts longer.”
He smiled.
Not the jaw twitch, not the polished client version. A real smile, his whole face changing, eyes going warm, jaw relaxing, and my stomach dropped so hard I grabbed the edge of my desk to keep from swaying. When he smiled for real he looked like a different person, like someone I wanted to keep making smile, and that thought scared me more than the wolf thing ever did.
I whipped back to my screen so fast my neck cracked. My face burned, I could feel it climbing from my collar to my ears, and I stared at the same email for twenty minutes without absorbing a single word.
Shit.
Three days of ice and I blew it in six words.
The afternoon got worse from there. He didn’t push it, didn’t come to my desk, but the energy between us shifted from cold to warm and I could feel it in everything. Walking past his office to the printer, his reflection in the glass tracking me. Hearing his voice through the wall on a call and my body going still to listen. At four, a delivery came that I had to bring in, and when I set the package on his desk our eyes met and neither of us said a word and the air got so thick I forgot to breathe. I walked back to my desk on shaky legs and sat down and gripped the armrests of my chair until my knuckles ached.
I was shoving my laptop into my bag at the end of the day when he came out. Jacket on, keys in hand.
“Can I drive you home?”
I should have said no. I’d been saying no to everything for three days, no to eye contact, no to conversation, no to the pull that wouldn’t shut up no matter how many walls I threw between us.
“Fine. But only because parking is expensive and I’m trying to save money.”
His eyes smiled even though his mouth didn’t and I hated that I could read the difference now.
We rode the elevator down to the garage standing side by side, both staring at the doors, the three inches between our arms vibrating with everything we weren’t saying. He opened the passenger door before I got there and I gave him a look that saidI can open my own doorand he gave me one back that saidI know, I’m doing it anyway,and I got in because fighting about a car door felt like a waste of what little energy I had left.
Neither of us spoke on the drive. He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, eyes on the road, jaw flexing at every red light. I fidgeted with my bag strap, watched the city blur past through the window, tried not to notice how the car smelled like his cologne mixed with leather. His hand shifted on the gearstick at a stoplight and my eyes tracked the movement before I caught myself.
He pulled up outside my house and put it in park. Through the windshield my porch looked bare and dark, the light on for nobody, and the sight of those empty steps hit me harder than it should have.
I should get out, say thanks for the ride, close the door, go inside, continue the act.
“I missed reading to Fin,” I said instead.
I didn’t plan it. The words fell out quiet, barely above a breath, and I immediately wanted to reach into the air and shove them back in my mouth.
His hands tightened on the wheel. I heard his breath catch, a sharp intake, and the silence that followed pressed against my skin.
“He misses it too.” His voice came out rough.
My hand sat on the door handle but I didn’t pull it. The car was warm, he was right there, the porch was dark and empty. I was so goddamn tired. Tired of being angry, tired of sitting on cold wood alone pretending I didn’t miss a dog that wasn’t a dog. In the driver’s seat he was holding himself perfectly still, not pushing, not reaching, just waiting and letting me decide, and I hated that he was good at that because it made it harder to keep him at a distance.
I opened the door, got out, stood there with the night air cool on my face.
“Goodnight, Finneas.”
“Goodnight, Andrea.”
I closed the door and walked to my porch and I was halfway up the steps when it hit me that I’d used his first name, not Mr. Kingsley, just Finneas, natural and automatic, my mouth going off-script while my brain was still rehearsing the cold professional act.
Inside, I leaned against the door with my hands pressed over my face. A Post-It, a smile, a confession about Fin, his name in my mouth like nothing had changed. The wall I’d spent three days building was coming apart and I was the one pulling out the bricks.
I called Maryjane. Almost midnight, but she picked up on the second ring.
“He kissed me,” I said.
