“All of it.” I shrug and sip my champagne again. The glass is almost empty.
“Gonna have to elaborate on that one.”
I finally look up at him and I swear he almost flinches when our eyes meet. I’m not sure what that says about the emotions in my eyes — I’m not sure I want to know.
“Don’t you ever—” My voice cracks. I ignore it and start over. “Do you ever feel like you could just disappear and no one would even notice?”
He stares at me a beat — brow creasing, eyes active, mouth pressing into an even firmer line. My heart starts beating too fast. He’s watching me so intently, it’s like he’s never seen me before. Like I’ve changed right before his eyes into a stranger.
I look away, because I can’t look at him. Not with that mortifying question — a question that revealed so much more than I ever intended to — still lingering in the air between us.
The longer it’s out there, the more exposed I feel. Like I’ve just reached into my chest, pulled out my beating, vulnerable heart, and handed it to him on a platter.
Worse still, he doesn’t say anything. Not a single word. The silence stretches, grows, until it’s a physical presence. Until it’s so loud, my ears begin to ache with it, and suddenly, for no reason at all, I’m fighting tears.
I should’ve stuck with indifference.
Indifferent is always better than raw and afraid and lonely and broken.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Then, out of nowhere, a hand lands on the bare flesh of my arm. Every thought except holy-frack-Nate-is-touching-me disappears from my mind as lightning jolts through me, frying my circuit boards. I go completely still, barely breathing as my eyes move slowly from the hand curled around my arm — so unbearably gentle, like I’m made of glass — to his other fist, which is wrapped so tight around the deck railing, his veins pop like stark cords. It’s a wonder the wood doesn’t splinter under his hold.
As though he’s so tense from just touching me, he needs a physical outlet.
As though the feeling of my skin under his palm is nearly enough to kill him.
I marvel at the tandem show of utter tenderness and brute force. At his ability to keep that pain contained within himself, never once tightening his grip on me. Such total control — I’d be intimidated, if I could feel anything at all, right now.
My entire system, every ounce of sensory input, is narrowed to a single point of contact. To five callused, masculine fingers, where they grip the fragile skin of my wrist.
My eyes trail up the muscled length of his arm to his broad chest, then to the tanned column of his throat where it peeks out the unbuttoned collar of his black dress shirt. Before I lose all my courage, I slide my gaze up over the planes of his face to meet his stare head-on.
He’s not even looking at me.
His eyes are on his own hand, where it’s curled reverently around my wrist. He’s staring at it like he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Something stirs low in my abdomen, a pang of longing shooting through me like an electric charge.
“Nate…” I whisper, breathless.
His eyes snap to mine, but his hand doesn’t move. “You drunk, West?”
“No,” I say, even though it’s kind of a lie.
“Five glasses of champagne say otherwise.”
My mouth parts and my eyes narrow. “What, you’ve been spying on me?”
“Don’t think watching the most boring date in history counts as spying. Even if you are wearing your fuck-me heels.”
My brain actually stutters inside my skull, hearing the phrase fuck me come from Nate’s mouth, watching those lips form such sensual, sinuous words. Words that should insult me, not turn me on.
“Excuse me?” I snap, mustering all the anger I can manage to cover my sudden lust. “For your information, Cormack is not boring. He’s charming. And good-looking. And unlike some people I know, he doesn’t feel the need to assert his manhood by brooding and glaring and grunting like a bull in heat.”
“West—”