"I know you don't want to hear this," she says. "And I know the timing is terrible, and I know you have every right to hate me for what I did. But watching you in that studio with Rainey, the way you crouched beside her chair and told her that what she and Grant built was going to put his killer in a cage." She pauses, and the mask slips just enough for me to see everything underneath. "Grant was right about you. You're the person he trusted to finish this. And I'm glad he was right."
I stand at the counter and look at her across the kitchen. The distance between us is a few feet of tile. Two steps. I could cover it in two steps, and my hands would be in her hair and my mouth would be on hers and I'd have her backed against the refrigerator before she finished her next breath.
The image is so clear it's practically a memory. Her back against cold steel, her legs around my waist, her hands fisting in my shirt the way they did the first night, the way they did every night, the way her body saysyesin a language her mouth hasn't learned to lie in.
She's looking at me the way she looked at me in that Albuquerque motel. Eyes steady. Chin lifted. That infuriating combination of challenge and surrender that makes my blood go hot and my brain go quiet. She knows what I'm thinking. She's thinking it too. I can see it in the flush climbing her neck, in the way her breathing has gone shallow, in the way her fingers are curled at her sides like she's physically holding herself back.
"Get some sleep," I say. "We can be at the bank when it opens."
Turning around takes everything I have. Every muscle fights it. My body pulls toward her the way it pulls toward the center of a spin, and I override the pull with the same stubborn discipline that keeps me on a bull when gravity says I should be in the dirt.
I close the bedroom door and lean against it. My pulse is hammering, and the back of my neck is hot, and the taste of bourbon and the smell of her are fused together on my tongue.
I lie in a borrowed bed and stare at the ceiling and think about the way Kenna laughed in the truck, and the way she pressed her arm against my shoulder and held it there, and the way she looked at me across that kitchen with her chin up and her eyes daring me to close the distance.
Two steps. I replay them until dawn.
13
KENNA
Iwake up to the smell of coffee and the sound of Colt moving through a kitchen that doesn't belong to either of us.
The bedroom is small and sun-washed, and for a disoriented second I don't remember where I am. Then the night comes back in pieces: the bourbon, the saltshaker, his body pressed against my back for one second longer than necessary. The look on his face across the kitchen when he was deciding whether to close the distance. The way he said'get some sleep'like the words were costing him something he couldn't afford.
I press my face into the pillow and breathe and try to reorganize my priorities. Grant's evidence. The safety deposit box. Torres. The man making coffee on the other side of the wall is not the priority.
My body disagrees, but my body has been wrong about Colt before. Or right about him. The distinction between those two things stopped being clear somewhere around the third time he put his hands on me.
I dress and walk into the kitchen. He's at the counter with a mug, and he's already showered.
Which means the bathroom smells like him, which means I'll be brushing my teeth surrounded by his smell and trying to focus on federal law enforcement instead of the man who slept twenty feet away and didn't cross the hallway.
He looks up when I come in. His eyes drop to my mouth, hold for half a second, and then snap to the window. The recovery is fast. Not fast enough.
"Coffee's ready," he says.
"I can see that."
"Bank opens early on weekdays. We should move."
"Good morning to you too, Holloway. I slept great, thanks for asking. Really enjoying the ambiance of your friend's guest room. The decorative horseshoe above the bed is a nice touch."
His jaw works. The thing that might be a smile twitches at the corner of his mouth and dies before it can fully commit. "You always this chatty before coffee?"
"I'm always this chatty. You've just been too busy brooding to notice."
I pour a cup and lean against the counter across from him, and the kitchen is small enough that our knees almost touch. Almost. The almost did a lot of damage last night, and it's still doing damage this morning.
He's wearing a clean shirt and his hair is damp at the collar and the muscles in his forearms shift when he lifts his mug, and I catalog each detail because apparently, I have no self-control and no learning curve.
"You sleep?" I ask.
"Some."
"Liar."
He looks at me over the rim of his mug. His eyes are steady, but the shadows underneath them tell the truth his mouth won't.
