He said my name when things were significant. I’d learned that.
I backed away, and my hands shook as I dug through my bag for my keys. He watched while I found them and got the right one into the lock.
The door opened. I stepped inside and turned back.
He hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d kissed me.
“Goodnight,” I said.
“Goodnight.”
I closed the door and leaned against the back, listening.
The hallway remained silent.
I turned the deadbolt, the sound echoing in the quiet.
Only then did he move. His footsteps thudded down the hall, and the elevator pinged, the doors sliding open.
I remained by the door.
I was in so much trouble.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TOLREK
The alarm went off at five thirty. I’d been awake since four.
Sleep had been a series of starts and stops, my brain refusing to shut down the way it was supposed to. Every time I’d gotten close, I saw Haley’s face in the hallway. Felt the moment her lips had brushed mine. Heard the sound of her deadbolt sliding home.
I’d stood in the corridor after she’d closed the door. The elevator had been a short distance away, but I hadn’t moved toward it. I was unable to make myself leave until I was sure she was safe.
My apartment was dark except for the kitchen light I’d left on. Beau lifted his head from his bed in the corner, his ears forward, waiting to see if this was real morning or the middle-of-the-night kind where I got up to stare at the ceiling from a different location.
I sat up. “It’s morning.”
He stretched, yawned, and trotted over. I lifted him onto the bed, and he wrestled with the energy of a dog twelve times his size. I tried not to let him win too easily.
Eventually, I got up, set him on the floor again, and took a shower. Brushed my tusks. Stared into the mirror longer than Ishould wondering what—if anything—a beautiful woman might see in me.
I left the bathroom without answers and strode into the living room, dropping down onto the couch. I’d mounted the sketch on the wall across the room, hanging it where I’d see it whenever I sat here.
Beau settled at my feet, looking up at me with his tiny, stubby tail spiraling and the expectation of someone who knew the routine and trusted it would be followed.
I grabbed his harness and leash and dressed him for the outdoors.
Outside, the cool air bit deeply. It was early enough that the streets were quiet, only a few cars and the occasional person heading to work or coming home from a night shift. Beau pulled me toward the park with his usual determination, and I let him lead.
Haley’s building sat across the street from mine. Five stories, brick, with narrow windows and fire escapes along one side. I didn’t plan to look at it while we walked past.
Until I did.
Her light was on. Fourth floor, second window from the left. The curtains were drawn but backlit. She was awake.
I kept walking.
The park absorbed us into its early morning quiet. Beau investigated the usual spots with the focus of someone conducting vital research. A jogger passed. An older man sat on a bench near the pond, feeding pigeons popcorn from a bag in his lap.
