Page 7 of Heatstroke
Daniel shook water from his wrist, jaw tight. "I didn't do it for applause."
"I didn't say you did."
A gust of wind swept up the shoreline, warm and erratic, sending palm fronds into a noisy dance. Someone inside called for rum. The bartender obliged. Daniel turned to leave, but Thierry moved with him, not blocking, not interfering—just there. Always there.
They ducked back into Ital Brisa, the wooden floor damp beneath their feet. The inside was almost empty now, save a few diehards nursing their drinks and watching the downpour like a boring film they'd seen before.
"Looks like we're stuck here till it passes," Thierry said. "Unless you want to swim home."
He spoke to the bartender in the local Patois, too quick for Daniel to understand right away. The bartender reached below the bar and gave Thierry two towels. He tossed one to Daniel.
Daniel caught it and wiped the back of his neck. "I've been stuck in worse places."
Thierry led him to a U-shaped booth tucked into a corner, unseen from plain view, and tilted his head. "That what you were doing wherever you came from? Being stuck?"
Daniel's eyes narrowed. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"That thing where you pretend to be asking casual questions."
Thierry shrugged, undeterred. "It's not casual. I'm curious. You act like no one should look at you too long, but you keep showing up in public."
Daniel snorted softly. "You think I'm performing solitude?"
"I think you're bad at it."
Daniel glanced out at the water, now silvering under the murky light, and said nothing. Thierry waited.
"You don't know me," Daniel said at last.
Thierry leaned forward. "Then tell me something. Anything."
Silence again. The kind that pulled tight rather than soothed. Daniel let the towel fall across his lap and finally sat, slow and wary.
Thierry smiled. "See? That wasn't so hard."
"I'm not here to talk."
"You keep saying that," Thierry murmured, "but your eyes say otherwise."
And for a moment, Daniel said nothing, because the man wasn't wrong, and that was the most dangerous part.
The air between them was no longer neutral. It pulsed now, damp and faintly charged, like the stillness before another storm. Beyond the warped wood of the bar's open shutters, the sea heaved slow and gray beneath the bruised afternoon sky, and rain pattered softly on the corrugated roofing like a secret trying to be kept.
Thierry hadn't looked away. His gaze, direct and unreadable, bore into Daniel like a tide neither resisted nor acknowledged. There was no grin now, no irony, no performance. Just a stillness, coiled and watchful.
And beneath it, something dangerous yet irresistible. Something that asked nothing but demanded everything.
"I'm going to kiss you now," Thierry said, voice calm, as though it were a forecast rather than a proposition.
Daniel's jaw tightened. He didn't move. Didn't nod. But he didn't retreat either—and that was enough.
Thierry reached out, one slow hand behind Daniel's neck, not tentative but measured, as though they'd done this a hundred times in another life. The touch was warm, damp from the rain, the fingers sure. And then the kiss.
It was not soft.
It was not careful.
