He surrendered first, leaning back just enough to rest his forehead against mine. Out of breath, he asked, “What about the file?”
“Bugger the file.” I grabbed the front of his shirt in my fists and back-stepped toward his bed, pulling him along with me. It took him maybe three full seconds to dead-drop the file to the floor and fall down with me on his crumpled covers.
x x x
When I fell asleep, Sherlock was curling a lock of my hair around his finger and explaining some ridiculous theory of his that had to do with surviving a fall into water by shaping his body as he slipped beneath the surface. I felt like I’d slipped beneath the surface as well. I was completely relaxed in his bed and in his arms in a way I shouldn’t have been with anyone, much less this boy who talked physics in between kissing me and studying my face, in the lazy, contented way I studied his. My last thought had been something about how much bluer his eyes seemed when they lit up with discovery—and how they darkened when they looked down on me.
I woke up long before the sun rose and realized almost instantly how stupid I’d been. I had to get home before someone realized I was gone, and I didn’t even know what time it was. I slipped out from under Lock’s arm and used the light from his phone to find mine, the case file, and my handbag. Despite my rush, I stood at his door for two timeouts of my phone’s light, memorizing as much of the crime map as I could. Then a third, watching how the shadows tumbled into the hollows of Lock’s cheeks as he slept. And when I started to feel an ache within my chest, I left.
The door had barely clicked shut behind me when Mycroft’s voice drifted down from the staircase to the third floor.
“He won’t know why you left.”
I didn’t exactly flinch at his words, but it took me too long to respond to what he’d said. Too long again to think of how one responds to a statement like that. “Have you considered wearing a bell around your neck?”
He was sitting on a step near the bottom of the stairs, like he’d been waiting for me to come out. Watching Sherlock’s bedroom door like a proper stalker, and yet I was the one who felt like I was creeping about a stranger’s house in the night. And he knew it. He was in no rush to answer my question and even took a moment to glance down at the fingernails of his left hand, which I noticed were meticulously manicured. “Once, but I found it clashed with my mysterious nature.”
“Your creepy lurker persona? Yes, I’m sure that does well with the ladies.”
Mycroft might have visibly shuddered. “As I said, I’ve given up women.”
“For Lent?”
“When I was fourteen and kissed my first boy.”
I nodded and stared at him. “That doesn’t really make your lurking less creepy.”
Mycroft smiled in this almost straight-lipped way that I was pretty sure meant he was about to change the subject. “Don’t leave.”
“He knows I have brothers to care for. He knows I have my studies.”
“And yet he will spend all of the morning deducing the infinite number of reasons why you didn’t wake him to say good-bye.”
“You don’t know what I said to him. And it’s none of your business.” I thought I heard a faint noise from the floor above.
Mycroft must have heard it too, because his chin rose, despite the fact that he refused to look up. “He is my business.” We stared at each other for a few long seconds before he added, “I don’t want him broken.”
It really was none of his concern. I had no reason at all to explain myself or to even answer his ridiculously dramatic accusation. And still I asked, “How do you know he is the one who will break?”
Mycroft’s eyes didn’t light up like his brother’s, but his expression was tinged with an awe of discovery that seemed familiar, despite his droopy lids. He didn’t say anything more, just nodded and turned to run back up the stairs, leaving me to go the opposite direction. Once I reached the street, I found that I’d been clutching my shirt at my chest, like I was trying to hide from what I’d just exposed of myself in the house.
But it was too late. They’d both already seen too much.
Chapter 12