Page 27 of His Wall

“Don’t ‘Julian’ me after hours like I wasn’t Mr. Cross this morning.”

She didn’t answer. I shrugged the jacket off and let it fall. Heat came up under my ribs — not anger. Something next to it. Something I’d been holding down that didn’t have a clean name.

I walked toward her. Four steps. I watched her face the whole way.

The first step, her smile broke. The second step, her grip on the notebook tightened. The third step, she stepped back — out of my doorway and into the hallway.

I followed. She took another step back. I matched her. Another. I matched her again. The hallway was empty. The light had gone to the low overnight setting.

Her shoulders touched the wall.

She stopped. Her chin was up. Her gray eyes hadn’t left mine. The notebook was pressed to her chest like a small shield.

I stopped in front of her. I lifted my left hand and set it flat on the wall an inch from her left ear. I did not touch her. I leaned in — one inch, two, three — until my face was a foot from hers, and the smell of her was a real thing in the air between us.

Her breath caught. It went out in a small, uneven sigh that fluttered against my chin. Her shoulders moved a quarter-inch back. The notebook rose with her chest. Her gray eyes were on my mouth for half a second, then back on my eyes. Her throat moved when she swallowed.

She did not push past me. She could have. I gave her all the space in the world on her right side. She did not take it. She stood there with her back to the wall and her hand white on the notebook and her gray eyes on mine, and she stayed.

My heart was loud. I had not done this to anyone in my life. I had never been the man in the hallway with the hand on the wall. I was standing here because I had been two different people for her, and I was tired in a way I didn’t know how to be.

I lowered my voice.

“What happened this morning, Claire?”

“I don’t — ”

“Don’t.”

She closed her mouth. Her chin trembled. Once. I saw it. Gone before I could be sure.

I leaned in another inch. I could see the dark ring around the gray iris, the faint shadow under her left eye where concealer had worn off, the place at her temple where the tight knot had pulled.

“The other day you sat in my office and told me a story about your father, your towns, coffee in the morning, and I tried to be kind to you. This morning, you came in and didn’t look at me for nine hours. Tonight, you’re at my door, calling me Julian like none of it happened. And last night — ”

I stopped.

“What game are you playing, Claire Kent?”

SIX

LEAH

"Julian"

His name left me on a breath I didn’t mean to give.

He didn’t move. His left hand was flat on the wall an inch from my ear, his face inches from mine. The heat coming off him was real — the warm cotton of his shirt, the faint clean scent at his collar, the breath at his mouth.

His eyes went to my mouth.

I felt my pulse in my throat, in my teeth, in the watch on my wrist. I had to get out from under him. I couldn’t move.

“Let me go.” The words came out smaller than I intended. It was Claire Kent’s voice — and Leah Calder’s.

“Answer the question, Claire.”

His voice was low, not angry. The grin was gone. His hazel eyes were dark in the dim hallway, the brown flecks in the green inches from mine. His mouth was open just slightly.