Closest thing to a laugh I’ve heard from him all day.
My stomach churns.
Liars.
I glance at him again.
His profile is hard against the washed-out sky, beautiful in a brutal way. Mouth set. Eyes pale and unreadable. The kind of face that looks like it was made to intimidate rather than be looked at too long.
And yet he brought me here.
Not to some polished place designed to impress me.
Here.
To the dead.
To the roots of it.
It feels less like trust and more like a warning. Maybe with him there isn’t a difference. I step closer to the stone, reading nothing, understanding too much.
“Liars are the worst,” I say quietly.
His silence stretches long enough that I think he won’t speak.
“They are.”
Only two words, but they change the shape of him for a second. Not enough to soften him. Just enough to remind me there’s a person under all that damage, buried somewhere deep enough that most people probably never find him.
I hate that I might be starting to. Especially with lies on my tongue.
I straighten and shove my hands deeper into my pockets. “Okay.”
He glances down at me. “Okay?”
I shrug. “I’ve met the dead. I’ve learned your parents were step-siblings. I’ve been ominously warned that it’s worse than I think.” I turn toward the path again. “I assume the next stop involves vodka.”
That almost gets a smile out of him.
Almost.
Instead he puts one hand at the back of my neck and steers me away from the grave.
Possessive. Thoughtless. Familiar enough now that my body registers it before my mind decides whether to be annoyed.
“Come on,” he says.
I let him guide me down the path between the stones.
But as we leave, I glance back once over my shoulder at the double grave, the flowers, the dark polished stone under the gray sky.
Bigger than you think.
Whatever he didn’t say stays with me all the way to the car.
***
By the time the plates are shoved aside and the third drink is gone, I’m stretched across the hotel bed in his shirt and nothing else, hair still damp at the ends from our shared shower, body loose with sex and vodka and the strange heavy exhaustion this city keeps pressing into my bones.
