Ángel doesn’t even have to say it for me to know what he’s thinking. “Don’t worry, I’m not selfish. I wouldn’t hog him.”
“Stop trying to bait me. Besides, I don’t share.” My sentiment gives more away than I’d like because Ángel looks like the cat that caught the canary before he turns to leave.
I want to call after him and clarify that I didn’t mean it the way he took it but I’d only be lying to both of us. Farren and Sebastian each bid me goodbye while I’m still standing shell shocked that I admitted to my best friend that I want my boss, just for myself.
“You ready to head out?” Bryce asks and I come back to myself and an empty sidewalk, our friends dispersed back to their lives.
“Sure.” I follow behind him on the way to the car and he looks over his shoulder at me every couple of feet as if he’s checking that I’m still with him and I wish I could tell him to stop.
Stop looking at me. Stop seeing me. Stop being so fucking kind and cute, and considerate, and on my mind every day. Stop giving me pieces of your life in such a small way that I look up and realize the picture is getting clearer with every day and only more beautiful for it.
We do our little dance of him opening the door for me and waiting until I’m situated before he shuts it for me. He settles into his side and the car beeps as he powers it up.
We’re on the beltway before he breaks the silence. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Sorry?” It what? There are so many ‘its’ right now. I can only hope he doesn’t mean my ill-advised interest in him that’s slowly smoldering into something more with every brush of his skin against mine.
“Whatever made you stop antiquing.”
Fuck.
That’s not an easier topic and time seems to slow, my heartrate pulsing heavily in my ears before I decide to divulge. My chest is so heavy with past hurts that part of me wants to shed some of it, share the weight.
“Some of it was interest, and appreciation for beautiful things, but Ángel was right. I have a soft spot for lost, forgotten things because sometimes that’s what I feel like. My mother got tired of my scavenging, of me wondering about lives I might have lived and people I might have belonged to if they hadn’t adopted me. If I’d been . . . kept by the parents I’m tied to by biology.”
His blinker clicks as he merges onto our exit and I brave a look over at him. His face is a study in chiaroscuro, the darkness of night juxtaposed with bright headlights passing us. This time when he glances over at me I’m not worried about the repercussions of him doing it while he’s driving and more like I’m afraid of what I’ll see there.
“You’re adopted?”
I nod, my throat tight at the admission that I’ve never made to anyone before. The irrational inadequacy that’s trailed me my whole life, that I’ve been trying to outrun and outperform and disprove, hangs between us suspended in my silence.
He seems to be weighing his words before he speaks and it takes a few moments of tension before he does.
“That’s their loss.”
I suck a shocked breath between my teeth, the air catching in my lungs. Out of everything I could have envisioned him saying, that never sprang to mind. Too close. He’s too close to being able to completely disarm me with words alone and I change the subject before he can burrow any deeper into the crack in my armor.
“What made you stop enjoying magic?”
His gaze moves back to the road and I watch his fingers curl around the steering wheel, clenching around the leather before he huffs out a breath and expels the reason like he has to get it out before he changes his mind.
“My ex, Stephanie, considered it childish. She was looking for a man with a portfolio and a hefty 401K, and a ten-year plan for the future. The kind of person I tried but failed to be and our marriage ended for it. After she left, I looked up and it had been years since I’d touched anything that made me feel alive, since I visited my family or made time for friends that were mine and notours.”
The escape room, Logan, it all falls into place and I realize he’s got just as much to prove as I do, just as much baggage making him doubt himself and his worth when what was his world told him he wasn’t enough.
There’s no fitting way to respond other than to take a page out of his book.
“That’s her loss.”
That’s her loss.
Rachel turning my phrase against me feels like a blow to my ribs and I have to swallow the emotion welling. She’s just reciprocating. Logically, I know she wouldn’t be saying this if I hadn’t uttered something similar but the wounded part of me wants to believe it, believeherand that she means it.
“Sounds like they’ve done a number on us, huh?” Her statement is dry, barely even humorous, but it’s enough to pull a chuckle from me.
“So, you’ve had a little more experience with this than I have. Does it get better? Do we ever get to a point where we stop searching for our worth in others?” I look over at her again, finding it harder and harder to avoid it as every day goes by.
What if I miss a smile? What if the sun catches on her hair and lights it up with gold and I don’t see it?
