She was wearing something dark green and sleeveless. Her hair was down. A small silver chain rested at her throat, something I hadn’t noticed at the rooftop on Friday.
At one point, when Beckett and Hadley had both gotten up to clear plates, the two of us were left alone at the table for forty-five seconds. Neither of us said a word. Neither of us looked away.
Beckett came back into the room and stopped just inside the doorway. He registered the silence. He registered our faces. He didn’t say anything. He sat back down and started talking about the wine.
It was almost ten when Joss said she should go. She didn’t live far. She thanked Hadley. She thanked Beckett. She picked up the small bag she’d brought with her, said goodnight, and turned toward the door.
I stood up. “I’ll see you home.”
I didn’t ask. I just said it.
Joss paused. Hadley, behind her, wore the small smile of a woman who’d been waiting all night for that exact sentence. Beckett raised his beer to me without looking up from the table.
“Sutton,” he said.
“Beckett.”
“Goodnight.”
I followed Joss out.
The hallway on Beckett’s floor was quiet. Our footsteps were the only sound—Joss’s heels against the polished concrete, my dress shoes a half-step behind. We took the elevator down to the lobby of Reboot without speaking. The doorman called us a car. It was waiting at the curb by the time we reached the sidewalk, and I held the door for her and got in after her, and I told the driver, “Pixel Lofts.”
The ride was less than ten minutes. We didn’t fill the silence. The streetlights moved past the window and Joss watched them while I watched her. The silence between us was the same silence we’d built across the dinner table—not uncomfortable, not easy, just charged.
The car pulled up in front of Pixel Lofts. I got out and held the door for her.
Her building was familiar to me now. I’d been on the rooftop three days ago. I’d been in the lobby this morning. I followed her through the glass doors and across the lobby and into the elevator, and she pressed the button for the second floor without looking at me.
The doors opened. She stepped out first. I followed.
Her apartment was at the end of the hall. It was the longest hallway I’d ever walked.
She stopped in front of her door and turned around to face me. The hallway light overhead was warm and low. Her hand had already gone to the bag at her hip for her keys, but it stopped halfway there. She didn’t take them out.
I’d been standing two feet away. I closed the distance to one.
“Thank you for walking me down,” she said.
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know. I’m doing it anyway.”
Something close to a smile tried to get out. I didn’t let it.
She looked up at me. She had to tilt her chin to do it, because I’m six two and she’s not, and the small movement of her head did something to me.
I lifted my hand.
I tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. It was an excuse—there was no hair in her face. There was nothing wrong with it. I tucked it anyway because I needed to know what her skin felt like under my hand, and the only way I was going to find out without crossing every line at once was this small thing. This almost-nothing.
My thumb traced the line of her jaw on the way down. Once. Slowly. She didn’t move.
Her chin had come up another fraction. Her lips had parted. Her breath had changed, and so had mine, and I could feel the air between us getting smaller and smaller without either of us doing anything to move it.
I could’ve closed the distance.
I almost did.
