I walked back around to the top of the table where his head was and reached for my oils.
“No peppermint, right?” I asked him.
“No, thanks. I hate the smell.”
Okay, then.
“I can use one without a scent. Will that work?”
His head nodded in the cradle.
I rubbed the warm oil between my hands and started at the base of his neck. The cords of his muscles were thick around his neckline and down his shoulders. In a way, he looked like someone built to fight, to protect, but sometimes he seemed so boyish, silly, even, someone who should be kept out of harm’s way.
A giggle broke out in the hallway, and I heard Mali shushing the laugh over my music.
“Elodie,” I told him. He stayed quiet as I moved my hands across his soft skin. His shoulders held a little less tension than they had yesterday. Holy shit, it had been only a day since he came in for Elodie! One day. One night at my dad’s house, one middle-of-the-night talk, one grocery-shopping trip, and suddenly I’m acting like I have some sort of crush on him.
I continued to talk to Kael about Elodie, reminding myself of our tiny little connection that all stemmed from bad timing and a petite French woman.
“I met her in training for my therapist’s license. She had just gotten here from France after researching programs for military spouses.” I remember how thick her beautiful accent used to sound to me. “She was very determined and taking the first day of work so seriously. I was drawn to her almost immediately. She’s smart and charming. I couldn’t believe she married a soldier,” I explained.
His shoulders danced with slight amusement.
“No offense.” I paused, relieved that he found it funny. “Phillip’s as nice as I think he is, yeah?” I asked Kael, while we were on the subject. He stayed quiet for a few seconds.
“He’s a good guy.”
“Promise? Because he brought her here from another country with no family and no friends here. I worry about her.”
“He’s a good guy,” he said again.
I needed to stop grilling him and just do my job. He didn’t come here to talk to me. He came here to get a treatment for his aching body.
I moved down his back and up his arms, settling into my normal groove. I did the same thing in most treatments, medium pressure, using a little more oil than most other therapists did. The song playing was an older Beyoncé song that I loved as a teen, and I let the music fill the quiet air until about twenty minutes later, when I asked him to roll onto his back.
He closed his eyes when he turned over and I took the liberty of studying his face as I placed a warm towel over his eyes. His sharp jawline, the light stubble under his chin. He took a deep breath when I tucked my hands under his back and raked them up his skin, pressing and stretching the muscles in his back.
The moment I moved away from his shoulders, his hand reached up and yanked the towel off.
“I can’t have that on my eyes,” he said, his voice cracking.
I grabbed the towel from the floor and he sat up.
“Sorry—” he began.
I shook my head, lifting my hands up. “It’s okay. I should have asked . . .”
He was recently back from a deployment, and I wondered if his reaction was related to that, or if he simply didn’t like his eyes being covered. Maybe the towel was too hot? The list of things Kael didn’t like was building. The smell of peppermint, his lower body being massaged, towels covering his eyes . . .
His eyes were wide, his hands were gripping the sides of the table. “If you want to stop, it’s okay. I’m really sorry that—”
He shook his head and unwrapped his fingers, one by one, from the table’s edge. He let out a breath and closed his eyes.
Seconds later, I almost asked him what sounded good for dinner. I thought about telling him how I convinced Mali to let me choose my own music for the treatment room—and how much I loved the Beyoncé song that was playing. Should I ask him if he liked the smell of the caramel cake candle that filled the room? Something about him made me want to speak. All the time. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Only two minutes had gone by since I’d had him roll over. Fuck my life, time was going so slowly. It was unprofessional to talk a client’s ear off without them talking first. I repeated that to myself a few times.
“Everything good?” I asked finally. The words were practically bursting out of my mouth.
He nodded. “How’s your brother?” His question surprised me.
“I don’t know. I thought he’d come to my house as soon as he arrived to Benning, but I guess not,” I said. “He’s asleep at my dad’s now. My dad’s the one who told me that. I still haven’t gotten to talk to Austin alone. It’s so frustrating. He must have really fucked up. Otherwise, he would have called me by now. I can’t even believe he’s staying with our dad. Like what the hell?”
Kael kept his eyes closed. I was kneading my fists down his shoulders and arms. His eyes clenched shut.
“Sorry, that’s a longer answer than you probably wanted. I seem to do that a lot.” I laughed, but it sounded so fake. Probably because it was. I realized I had said too much, and really should be protecting my brother from a stranger’s judgment.
Kael’s eyes opened for a second and he leaned his head up, forcing eye contact. “It’s fine. I don’t mind it.”
I looked away and he laid his head back down. “Thanks, I think,” I teased, and my stomach flipped when his face broke into the biggest smile I had seen on him yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I walked into the lobby and only Mali was there. She wasn’t paying any attention to my arrival and was busy cleaning. I was waiting for Kael when I got Elodie’s text with the BuzzFeed link. She was the queen of “Is It Your Fault You’re Single?” quizzes, and “Are Women Taking Over the Self-Employment Industry?” articles. This one was “25 Things You Need to Know About Twilight.” Trust me, I already knew every detail of those books and films and enjoyed crushing all the “hardest” quizzes. Elodie didn’t share my love for vampires falling in love with humans, so she mostly took the “What Kind of Toast Are You?” or “Choose a Day of Meals and We’ll Tell You Where to Travel” ones.
I started scrolling through the list and wasn’t surprised by how basic these “facts” were. It was public knowledge that New Moon was Robert Pattinson’s favorite book in the series. I kept reading, smiling at the pictures. Twilight was my comfort series and had been since I was a teenager. I had all the merchandise and my mom let me see each of the movies at midnight the night they released. I cried in my room when Kristen and Rob broke up. As I zoomed in on a picture of them in the quiz, I caught something moving from the corner of my eye. My phone fell out of my hands and Kael reached for it. He looked at the screen and then at me. I was mortified. Kristen’s stunning face stared up at me, even more zoomed-in than it was when I’d dropped it.
“Sorry, I—” I started to say.
“Do you apologize every time you speak?” he interrupted me. My cheeks burned.
“Um, no. I just . . .” I paused. He was right. Sorry was probably the most overused word in my vocabulary.