“Oh, fuck you very much. You try doing it one-handed. These things are like Fort Knox.”
His smirk sends a little shock through me, but it’s nothing compared to the feeling of his fingers lightly brushing the underside of my wrist as he fiddles with the clasp. If he notices he’s covered me in goosebumps, he doesn’t say anything. I’ve never looked at his hands up close, but there’s something really quite lovely about them. Long fingers, wide, sturdy palms, a few calluses but not so many that they scrape against my skin. These are hands you can really do something with…or be done something to. I make a mental apology to Josh for how I’ve twisted the English language with that thought.
Lachlan knits his brows in concentration; it’s the same look he has when sizing up the angle for a free kick. “Okay, I concede that shaming you about this bracelet may have been a wee bit premature.”
“Vindication!”
He flicks his eyes to mine and smirks again. Then he wraps his fingers around my wrist, holding the bracelet in place with one hand while he fishes his phone out of the inner pocket of hisjacket with the other. “Make yourself useful and figure out how to tie a bow tie.”
“I thought you were just going for a Third Act Clooney vibe.” I type in his passcode, grateful to be distracted from the feeling of his fingers on my skin. “Watching now; I’ll be ready to do it in five months, when you’ve finally clasped the bracelet.”
He jerks my wrist toward him in gentle admonishment, then releases my arm with a flourish. “Ta da!”
I hand him the phone and take a step closer. This near to him, all my favorite, familiar features look strange. The ginger stubble, the deep laugh lines around his mouth, his full lips and white teeth that belie the poor reputation of British dentistry…Taking it all in is like watching TV in high definition for the first time, and a little tremor snakes through my chest as I grab the ends of the bow tie.
I try to concentrate on the video and the task at hand, not on the minty scent of his breath or how his lips pull into a smile every time he looks at me. It sounds dumb, but it’s like I’ve never fully acknowledged the fact of him, therealnessof him, his chest so solid and sturdy beneath my fingers. It’s making it very hard to tie the damn thing.
“As your wingman, I must report that Kieran Campbell asked about you the other day at training,” he says, and his voice is deep and steady. “Wondered if you were single.”
Something in me tightens. I’ve always thought maybe Kieran had a little crush on me, but never would I have expected him to say something about it to Lachlan. What does that mean? A feeling that might be panic slips a sinuous tendril around my throat. “Did you tell him I’m dead inside but to try again in a decade or so?”
“No, but I’ll remember that next time a potential suitor asks for my opinion.”
We lapse into silence while I focus on the video, which is describing the trickiest part of the process. Lachlan shifts his body and swallows; I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. When he speaks again, it’s like there’s almost a franticness about it, a fraying at the edges. “Would you want to go out with him?”
“I mean, when would I even have time, what with my duties as your valet?” I flick my eyes up and give him what I hope is a casual, normal smile, not one concealing about six hundred different meanings, questions, innuendos, inflections, anxieties…
“Are your eyes different colors?” he asks.
I’m thrown by this conversational pivot but relieved to move on from Kieran. “Very slightly, yes.”
“They’re really beautiful.”
The heat burns on my cheeks and I fight the urge to close my eyes. “It’s called heterochromia. Mine is central heterochromia, so just the inner part of one eye. But some people have complete heterochromia, like Kate Bosworth. Remember her? She has one blue eye and one brown. It’s wild. And it’s really common in dogs, like Siberian huskies.”
He looks down at me with a wry smile, one that feels like it could shift between mocking and sincere depending on the light. “One of my favorite things about you, Stripes, is that you’re completely incapable of taking a compliment.”
“What? No I’m not.”
“Earlier I said you looked amazing and you responded by talking about your pit stains. I tell you your eyes are beautiful and you come back at me with excerpts from a medical textbook and a reference to Kate Bosworth, whoever that is.”
“She’s an actress,” I say quietly. “She dated Orlando Bloom in the mid-2000s.”
“And the hits keep on coming! Please, crack on with the KateBosworth facts, since I know me talking about how it looks like someone spilled a bit of gold paint in your iris will make you staggeringly uncomfortable.”
“She was a champion equestrian in high school,” I mutter.
He throws his head back in laughter, jerking the bow tie out of my hands. “You are a freak, you know that?”
“Yes, I am well aware. Now get back here and let me finish this.” I focus on the silk, which is slippery in my shaking hands. I know I’m bright red and I know Lachlan will have the biggest shit-eating grin on his face because he knows he’s right: I am incapable of taking a compliment, especially from him. So I’ll just refuse to dignify his smirk with a response and keep my eyes focused on his throat.
But then he takes my chin in his hand and tilts it up toward him and I can’t focus on anything anymore. We stay frozen for a few breaths, eyes locked on each other, and it’s like his gaze is boring a hole straight through to the very core of me, and I’m fine with it and it terrifies me. The moment blossoms between us and it’s nearly imperceptible, but the air in the room shifts. It’s a subtle reorientation of particles, but I feel it. A weightiness, a heaviness, a sense of inevitability. Like magnets flipping around to lock onto each other, a softshunkof connection that resonates in the center of my chest. I know Lachlan feels it, too: I can see the tension of his shoulders, the faint hint of pink on his marble-cut cheekbones, the shallow exhale of a nervous breath. It’s like we’re both milliseconds away from moving closer, though already there’s nothing between us but shared breath and a charged, electric air. He slides his hand up my arm, his fingers catching on the fine mesh of my sleeves. Something builds inside me, some great, looming shock of feeling that rushes up and escapes my lips in a sharp exhalation. I search his eyes for a sign about what’shappening, but all I can see is my own confusion and want mirrored back at me.
I’m the first one to break the spell. I have to, because it’s dangerous to imagine what will happen if I don’t. I swallow. “A lot of people thought David Bowie had heterochromia, but really he had something called anisocoria, where one of his pupils was bigger than the other.”
For a second, it seems like he’s not going to let us slip out of the moment, like he’s holding us there, his lips slightly parted and his breathing rapid. But then his mouth twitches and he releases me, from the grip of his fingers and the grip of his gaze. “I’m going to interpret that as you saying, ‘Thank you, Lachlan, for your generous compliments. If I were a more emotionally mature person, I’d be able to respond appropriately.’ ”
“Good interpretation.”
