He says my name again, tentative, a question. “What happened?”
21
CHARLIE’S LAPTOP BAG slides to the floor as he comes toward me. “Nora?” he says one more time.
When I can’t get any sound out, he pulls me toward him, cupping my jaw, thumbs moving in soothing strokes against my skin. “What happened?” he murmurs.
His hands root me through the floor, the room stilling. “Sorry. I just needed . . .”
His eyes search mine, thumbs still sweeping in that gentle rhythm. “A nap?” he teases softly, tentatively. “A fantasy novel? A competitively fast oil change?”
The block of ice in my chest cracks. “How do you do that?”
His brow furrows. “Do what?”
“Say the right thing.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “No one thinks that.”
“I do.”
His lashes splay across his cheeks as his gaze drops. “Maybe I just say the right thing for you.”
“I felt like I was suffocating.” My voice breaks on the word, and his hands slide into my hair, his eyes rising to mine again. “Like—like everyone was looking at me, and they could all see what’s wrong with me. And I’m used to feeling like . . . like I’m the wrong kind of woman, but with Libby it’s always been different. She’s the only person I’ve ever really felt like myself with, since my mom died. But it turns out Dusty was right about me. That’s who I am, even to my sister. The wrong kind of woman.”
“Hey.” He tips my face up to his. “Your sister loves you.”
“She said I have no life.”
“Nora.” He just barely smiles. “You’re in books. Of course you don’t have a life. None of us do. There’s always something too good to read.”
A weak half laugh whisks out of me, but the feeling doesn’t last. “She thinks I don’t care about anything except my job. That’s what everyone thinks. That I have no feelings. Maybe they’re right.” I laugh roughly. “I haven’t cried in a fucking decade. That’s not normal.”
Charlie considers for a moment. His arms slide around my waist to lock against the small of my back, and the contact cannonballs directly into my thoughts, sending them zinging away from the impact. I don’t remember doing it, but my arms are around him too, our stomachs flush, heat gathering between us. “You know what I think?”
Touching him feels so good, so strangely uncomplicated, like he’s the exception to every rule. “What?”
“I think you love your job,” he says softly. “I think you work that hard because you care ten times more than the average person.”
“About work,” I say.
“About everything.” His arms tighten around me. “Your sister. Your clients. Their books. You don’t do anything you’re not going to do one hundred percent. You don’t start anything you can’t finish.
“You’re not the person who buys the stationary bike as part of a New Year’s resolution, then uses it as a coatrack for three years. You’re not the kind of woman who only works hard when it feels good, or only shows up when it’s convenient. If someone insults one of your clients, those fancy kid gloves of yours come off, and you carry your own pen at all times, because if you’re going to have to write anything, it might as well look good. You read the last page of books first—don’t make that face, Stephens.” He cracks a smile in one corner of his mouth. “I’ve seen you—even when you’re shelving, you sometimes check the last page, like you’re constantly looking for all the information, trying to make the absolute best decisions.”
“And by you’ve seen me,” I say, “you mean you’ve watched me.”
“Of course I fucking do,” he says in a low, rough voice. “I can’t stop. I’m always aware of where you are, even if I don’t look, but it’s impossible not to. I want to see your face get stern when you’re emailing a client’s editor, being a hard-ass, and I want to see your legs when you’re so excited about something you just read that you can’t stop crossing and uncrossing them. And when someone pisses you off, you get these red splotches.” His fingers brush my throat. “Right here.”
My nipples pinch, my thighs squeezing and skin shivering. The tension in his hands makes his fingers curl against the curve in the small of my back, gathering the fabric there like he’s talking himself out of ripping it.
“You’re a fighter,” he says. “When you care about something, you won’t let anything fucking touch it. I’ve never met anyone who cares as much as you do. Do you know what most people would give to have someone like that in their life?” His eyes are dark, probing, his heartbeat fast. “Do you know how fucking lucky anyone you care about is? You know . . .”
He hesitates, teeth sinking into his lip, eyes low, fingers loosening but not removing themselves from my vertebrae. “When Carina and I were kids, my dad had to work a lot. We didn’t have much money, and then my mom’s mother passed, and—the bookstore started hemorrhaging money.
“My mom isn’t a businessperson. She isn’t even really a person who keeps a schedule. So the shop’s hours were totally unpredictable. Some artist talk would get scheduled for the middle of the week in Georgia, and she’d take me and Carina out of school to go to it, without notice. Or she’d get caught up with a painting and not only miss the workday, but forget to pick us up from school. Carina was always more like my parents, laid-back, but I was anxious. Maybe because I’d had such a hard time when I first started school, or maybe just because I finally actually liked it, but I hated missing class, and on top of that—”
He draws a breath. My arms have been twisting into the back of his shirt, keeping him close, connected to me at all times.
“—people didn’t approve of my family,” he goes on. “My dad was already engaged when he and my mom got together, and she was already three months pregnant with me.”
My mouth opens and closes. “Oh. Clint’s not . . .”
He shakes his head. “My biological father’s an art curator, back in New York, actually. We’ve exchanged a couple emails, and that was enough for us. As far as I’m concerned, Clint’s the only dad I’ve ever had or needed, but as far back as I can remember, I knew I wasn’t like him. Didn’t look like him. Didn’t like the same things as him.”
The warm gold and inky dark of his eyes lift to mine again, and a painful wanting blooms behind my solar plexus. “I was in fifth grade when I found out the truth. From some kids at school.”