What exactly, I have no fucking clue.
We’re now in front of King’s house. We agreed that I’ll be moving in, not only because we can’t leave this place empty, but I also don’t want her alone after everything that’s happened.
However, she doesn’t know that piece of information, and she never will.
“Go get some sleep,” I tell her.
She faces me with a slight furrow in her brows. “How do you know I didn’t sleep last night? I looked at myself in the rearview mirror, and I don’t have dark circles.”
“You have tremors.”
“Tremors?”
I tip my chin at her hands. Her fingers are shaking slightly, even though they’re lying inert at either side of her.
She lifts them up and stares at them under the sun, her lips falling open the slightest bit. And I want to jam my fingers in there, open her mouth wide with them and order her to suck on them.
I clench my fist.
What the fuck am I thinking about? In King’s house? About his daughter?
It’s those damn words. She shouldn’t have said them. She shouldn’t have confessed that she doesn’t want safe and boring. That’s what girls like her are supposed to want. Fucking safe and fucking boring. It’s predictable and with a known result.
This whole new thing isn’t.
“Oh. I didn’t notice that.” She lets her arms fall. “How did you?”
“How did I what?”
“Notice my tremors when I haven’t?”
“Because you were doing it when we were at City Hall.” Lie. It’s barely noticeable unless you look close—really fucking close.
“I was?”
I nod but don’t say anything else. She keeps watching me, though, as if waiting for my words. When they don’t come, she wipes her palm on her denim shorts.
“So what happens now?” she asks in that tone again, in that fucking bright and lively and damn curious tone.
“Now you go to sleep and I go back to the firm.”
“And after that?”
“After that, you’ll wake up and eat something. Actually, do that now. Eat before you sleep.”
“You give a lot of orders, did you know that?”
“And you do a lot of talking back.”
“Because you’re so inflexible. Someone has to lighten up the mood a little.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“If you want.”
“Do you see me laughing?”
She throws a dismissive hand in the air. “I never see you laugh, Nate. So the problem is you, not me. Anyway, what happens after I wake up and eat and go to visit Dad and you come back from work?”
“What do you think will happen?” I’m treading on dangerously thin ice, but I can’t ignore the light shining through the greenish part of her eyes, the playfulness in it. But even that is darkening now as she gulps audibly, the sound carrying through the air.
“I…don’t know.”
“You don’t, huh?”
“No.”
“That should mean nothing will happen.”
“But you said something about me being fucked. I heard it. And I also heard the other thing.”
“The other thing?”
She bites her lower lip. Hard. I’m surprised it doesn’t start bleeding. “You know.”
“Say it.”
“I…can’t.”
“See. This is why I told you to go back to safe and boring.”
“I said I don’t want that. If I did, I wouldn’t have kissed you two years ago.”
At the mention of that, memories of her lips against mine rush back in. It’s a myriad of hazy things, like her body against mine and her scent bleeding beneath my flesh.
I don’t even like kissing, but now, I can’t stop staring at her fucking lips. The lips that started it all when they shouldn’t have.
“That’s not a moment to be proud of, Gwyneth.”
“I know. I should’ve grabbed you harder so you wouldn’t have been able to push me away. But you’re strong. I’ve seen the way you work out with Dad, so I don’t think I stood a chance either way.”
I can feel the muscles clenching in my jaw and upper chest. With every word out of her mouth, she’s digging a knife into places that shouldn’t be disturbed.
“For once, you said something accurate.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you wouldn’t have stood a chance. You didn’t. You don’t. So stop playing with fire.”