By the Book (26 page)

“And this might have just started off being about making you feel better, but whatever happens with you and her, you should know something.”

My curiosity piqued, I hauled myself up, propped up on forearms, still reclining but comfortable enough to easily watch Daniel as he moved away from me and sat on the edge of the bed. “Oh?” I laid a hand on one of his wings. And it still didn’t move, no matter how realistic his ink was.

“I do love you, you know.” He glanced over his shoulder for but a second, and before I could decide whether I wanted to keep touching him or lift my hand away, he stood and left the room.

Chapter Sixteen

Needles of water as hot as I could stand performed a twisted acupuncture on the back of my neck, doing nothing to ease my headache or distract me from thoughts of Daniel.

Difficult at the best of times, but here, now, so late at night? Impossible.

He said it, he said it, he said it, I reminded myself, needing no reminders. He said it…first.

Wincing, either in pain or shock at my own realization, I wondered if cranking the dial up another notch would result in scalded skin. Didn’t care. Did it anyway.

He’d said it
first
, which suggested he’d beaten me to the punch and I would have done so myself eventually.

Turning to the spray and rinsing the last of the shower gel away, I heard the screen slide open, inclined my head until it closed again, only then releasing my held breath.

Somehow, somehow, Daniel managed to make his breath on the side of my neck hotter than the water pouring down on us both. And still I shivered.

An instant later, his hands came to rest on my hips and his kiss whispered across my skin, right behind my ear. “Hey, you.” A greeting that wasn’t needed. I already knew he was there; his hands were on me. And he didn’t need to touch me for me to sense him; Daniel Cross was unavoidable if he was anywhere in the vicinity. Just two words to break the ice that shouldn’t have formed underneath a scalding hot shower.

His fingers twitched, tightened, flinched against me, either pulling me against him or holding me steady while he stepped closer.

Bracing the palms of my hands against the shower wall, I released a long, slow breath, hanging my head, letting the water run between my back and Daniel’s torso.

“I didn’t think you’d mind if I joined you,” he whispered, just loud enough for me to hear him over the running water. “At least…” He lessened his grip on me as I turned to face him, but maintained contact somehow. Always, always his hands were on me. “I hoped you wouldn’t.”

“No.” I eyed him with a degree of nervousness, wondering what I’d find in his eyes, but there was nothing on his face but a sly smile bordering on a smirk. “Why would I?”

He leaned in, his lips as close to mine as they could be without touching. “I have a desire to get clean.” Those lips curved into a smile as they made gentle contact with my skin, and I imagined their heat instantly evaporating any droplets of water with which they made contact. “Honest.” He held his head at an angle, regarding, studying,
scrutinizing
me, someone he’d seen a thousand times before. But whatever he saw was something reborn, because the look in his eyes was different. A wrinkle at the bridge of his nose, deepening under the weight of his frown, divided his eyes. “Would I lie to you?”

The noise that came out of my mouth when he let his palm rest against my hip was somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. His lips curved into a self-assured smirk at the same moment his fingers curved against me, just as slowly, just as tortuous.

Daniel moved closer, as close as he could get. The shower rained all around us, but there was no water, no daylight, no air between our bodies. “Would I throw a casual assurance your way even though I had other intentions?” he whispered against my mouth, just nipping my bottom lip to punctuate his words with a whimper. I thought it came from me. I wasn’t sure. “Would I
palm you off
like that?”

“Dan…”

He didn’t let go, didn’t pull back. No rewind. We were on pause after so many instances of fast-forward.

The very silence he maintained urged me to speak. Anything to fill that imaginary space. “I…” Reaching up to brush my sopping wet hair back, I closed my eyes and saw far more in my mind’s eye than I was prepared to deal with right then. Looking at him once more, I held his face in both hands, tentatively, like it was my first time touching him.

Discomfited by something I couldn’t define, I lifted my hands away. And he frowned. Questioned me this time, and still without speech. Amazing how a man whose business was words didn’t need them when he was with me.

When I touched him again, one hand on each of his shoulders at the genesis of the curve of his neck, he exhaled. Not with pursed lips or a heaving chest or tension suddenly absenting itself from his shoulders. Just with a whisper of warm air against my mouth.

I wanted to get something out into the open, but even standing in the shower with him, both of us naked, I held back for fear of further exposure. Even though he’d laid it on the line and said—

He loves me.

A nanosecond before his lips made contact with mine, the memory of the way he’d said it made me gasp. With uncertainty. Not of his feelings, but—

“Christ, I can’t get enough of the way you feel,” Daniel murmured, nearly kissing me every time his lips moved, but not.

—of my reaction.

I moaned, a strangulated sound somehow more than that of usual desire, a twist of something new appearing in the cocktail of feelings Daniel stirred up. He pulled away, frowned as he drew me into focus.

“Something wrong?”

My hands still on his shoulders, I tightened my fingers every time his thumb moved back and forth on my hip. Biting my lip, I shook my head no, knowing it was a lie.

He loved me. I loved Georgia. Such a tangled fucking web. I believed Georgia still loved me deep down. No one could walk away from what we had and just switch it off. There had to be a way—

“Reece?” A question, not a call for my attention. He cradled my neck, tracing his thumb back and forth over my wet skin.

Ticktock, ticktock, time’s a-wasting.

My heart skipped, and as if he too realized we were broken, his gaze flicked over to the thumb on my neck. He broke contact, braced his palm against the wall, and my gaze followed it, my head turning just as he leaned in. Whether he’d been about to kiss me, I didn’t know, but his words sent a shiver up my spine. “What I said.”

I sucked in all the breath I could, which wasn’t much. Hoped the sound of running water would mask my uneven breathing. Knew it probably wouldn’t. Daniel could read me like one of the books he wrote so well.

“I meant it.”

And speech was impossible. And maybe that was the point. Maybe that was what he wanted, for me not to speak. Maybe he knew what I’d say better than I did. My throat swelled, rendering me unable to get any air into my lungs.

I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at anything. The gleaming white of the tiles hurt my eyes; at least that was what I told myself. I only screwed my eyes shut to stop them being blinded.

“I know it scared you.” Daniel’s touch, his voice were the only elements of sensory input I had, and waves of intense, guilty pleasure exploded at the nape of my neck. “It scared me too. Damn it, Reece, I know…”
His
breathing became shallower, his throaty moan warming my neck.

I was naked and so fucking exposed I couldn’t remember my own name.

“Reece.” My name on his lips, a reproach. Even as he spoke softly, the word reminded me of my divided loyalties. My lips parted a split second before he spoke again. “I
know
. I. Know.”

Widening my eyes, trying to get used to the brightness of the room again, I heaved in a deep breath and turned to Daniel. Only then did he let go of me, bracing both hands against the shower wall. One hand on my left, one on my right and he wasn’t touching me. I was still trapped though. “What do you know?”

He cocked his head and dipped his gaze to my mouth then up to my eyes again.

“I know your mind’s been on Georgia ever since I said I love you.”

I wondered if he expected me to say something then. Or wanted it.

He shifted his weight to enable one hand to lift off the wall and brush my hair back. He held his hand an inch from my face, shrugged, and leaned on the wall again. “I also know what it means that you said nothing.”

When I opened my mouth to speak, I had no idea what I was going to say, and the gratitude when he interrupted to save me the trouble made my blood run cold.
Gratitude
, because it wasn’t necessary for me to say a word?

“I wasn’t expecting you to say the same thing. Just a little acknowledgment wouldn’t have gone amiss. But you know what I saw in your eyes when I told you? Something you tried to cover up but couldn’t? Fear. Don’t deny it, Reece. You didn’t know what to say. Or do. And if someone reacts with fear to being told… You got that look. The ‘oh God, how am I going to handle this’ look. As if you owed me something. As if I expected anything of you for it.”

“No, I…” My feeble words trailed away on their own, defeated. I had nothing to return, nothing as strong as he desired, anyway. Without Georgia, I only had half of me to give away.

“But here’s the thing. I don’t expect anything from you.” His eyes clouded over for a moment, then refocused. “I know what you want. What you need, I should say.” Daniel hung his head, and I got a hint, just a hint of color from over his tense shoulders. Sniffing once, he lifted his head. “I need to leave.”

All—most—of the breath whooshed out of my lungs, leaving me just enough oxygen to ask, “What?”

“Now you know how Georgia and I both feel, and…look at you. I say her name and you flinch. Oh I know you still want me. But Georgia? You need time alone to figure things out. She wants you to choose one. You want both. I’d be happy either way as long as you were still part of my life, but there’s one thing I don’t want.”

“
Daniel
.”

“I don’t want to be with a man who blames me for not being someone else.” Another pause. He turned away, and the water glistened on his skin. Wet feathers, animated, on a drowning angel’s back.

The shower screen slid open, and I screwed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to watch it close again or see Daniel go.

Chapter Seventeen

“Hey.” I usually greeted Georgia with more warmth, but worn down by weeks of imitating a human pendulum, swinging between two lovers, I’d opted to stop. Unable to have both, I’d said
okay, neither
and given up all attempts to muster enthusiasm for what remained. It was hard to get excited by bitter ashes and cold memories anyway, even if one stood on my doorstep looking far more colorful than the rest of my monochromatic life.

“You gonna let me in then?”

I flinched, shuddered my way back into the here and now, and stood back. “Yeah, sure.” After I’d closed the door behind us—not locking it, because she wasn’t staying—I glanced over my shoulder.

Loitering a few feet away, she looked back, frowning in an approximation of concern.

One couldn’t expect her to just forget everything that had passed between us, but simply put, I wasn’t her problem anymore. I was her pile of bitter ashes, a cold memory she only had to deal with on occasions such as this, until her last possession had been removed and the excision was complete. Our lives would be separated.

My desire for Daniel had eaten away, cancerlike, at my relationship with Georgia, and everyone knew treating such a disease killed off the surrounding healthy tissue as well. Daniel had gone. Trouble was, Georgia’s love for me was too weakened for her to stay, so she was on her way out as well. She’d feel like my second choice if she remained. My default lover.

I sighed heavily and neared her with caution. At least I was still alive.

She pointed to the bedroom door. “Mind if I…?”

I released a breath, and she nodded, smiling.

“I know; I know. I don’t have to ask, right?”

She’d only taken one step closer to the bedroom before I interrupted. “No, it’s…” I ran a hand through my hair as if massaging my mind into action. “I left the rest of your stuff in the living room.”

“Oh?” Enlightenment spread over her face, turning the wide-eyed surprise to understanding. “I see.”

Clearing out the remnants of me.

“Yeah, I just thought it would be best if…” I turned, allowing my gaze to follow Georgia as she crossed the living room threshold. “You know.”

“Hmm.” She stopped in front of the armchair on which I’d left a box of books, CDs, other things I’d come across in the course of my daily home life. Hands on hips, she eyed me, oozing suspicion. “I see.”

“Georgia, it’s not like that.”

“What is it like, then? Was I taking too long to get my gear out of the bedroom and bathroom?”

“No, it—”

“Well, if he moves in that quickly, at least the bed will still be warm for him.”

“Jesus, Georgia! I’m not trying to get rid of you at all. I want you to stay. You know I’ve always wanted you to stay. Is there nothing I can do?” I knew the answer already.
Get rid of Daniel
. And I had. Or at least, he’d gotten rid of me. But not for her sake. And he was still in my head like a shadow. Still in my heart like a bruise.

“For as long as
he’s
in the picture—”

“He’s not,” I blurted out, biting my lip a nanosecond too late. However I wanted her to find out, it wasn’t like this.

Georgia froze with her hand on the bag. “What?”

“He’s not.” I shoved my hands in my jeans pockets, rolled my shoulders, and looked away from her again. But only momentarily; I couldn’t say it without seeing her eyes. “He’s not in the picture. Anymore.”

Georgia cocked her head, and a mixture of emotions flickered across her face. None of them were triumph. She cleared her throat. “What happened?” Looking me in the eye, she asked, “Did he finish with you?”

Ouch
. There it was, the slightest of barbs, and it stung. “Yes.”