“Why? It was…” He trailed off before settling on, “Pretty.”
She flinched. “Guess I just don’t feel like looking pretty very often.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you?”
And that was the question, wasn’t it? He tried to put it into words, licking his lips and closing his hand around nothing. The little bit of decoration had been striking, for sure, a contrast to the utility of how she usually dressed. It had drawn his attention to the fragile parts of herself she rarely showed.
The ones she never spoke about. Except that once.
Swallowing, he lifted his gaze to meet hers. “You told me it was your mom’s.”
And he watched all the color drain from her face.
Shit. Jo really had said that, hadn’t she? Adam had looked at her that way he tended to, with that weird mix of reverence and lust, and he’d asked her about the necklace, and she’d just given it up.
Inside her chest, her heart started racing, adrenaline flooding her veins. And she knew that fight or flight was a reflex, was a choice people made based on instinct, but it had never struck her as much of a choice at all.
She fought. And if you fought hard enough, if you fought people before they even imagined they should make the first strike, they tended to run. It saved you the effort of having to fly yourself. It saved you ever having to fight or fly from them again, because they knew. They understood what they were dealing with.
But Adam was sitting there, his knees almost touching hers, his gaze expectant. The skin of her throat burned from his touch, and her lips were kiss-bitten and damp.
The very first thing she’d ever done was attack him. And yet here he still was, pushing her. He hadn’t run.
And for the first time in her life, she didn’t want to fight him off.
She closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. Setting her pencil down, she braced her elbows on the desk and dropped her head into her hands. “Yeah. It was.”
A tentative hand settled on her shoulder. She stiffened beneath the weight but didn’t shake him off. “Are you okay?”
Was she ever okay? “I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
He was the one who’d had to go and ask her revealing questions. Then he wanted to give her a hard time when she reacted badly? Bullshit. “What do you want to know?”
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
She lifted her head to glance at him through narrowed eyes. “You asked me about my mother for a reason.”
“I asked you about your necklace.”
Right. “As a way of asking me about my mom.”
Something complicated happened in the vicinity of his mouth, not quite a frown and not exactly a smile. It was too open, too revealing. Too kind. “Actually, I was just trying to make conversation. And looking at your neck. Because it’s sexy as hell.” One corner of his lips crept up. “But if you want to tell me about your mother… I’d like to listen.”
Oh, hell. He was trying to get to know her, wasn’t he? She stifled an ugly laugh by covering her face again with her hands. That shit was for couples—real couples, ones who didn’t have five-week expiration dates. Ones who had time to hug and kiss and cluck at each other over the slow revelation of their pasts and then move on from them.
They didn’t have that kind of time. And deep down, she was pretty sure he didn’t really want to know.
She sighed, concocting in her head how best to deflect and change the subject, when the pressure of his hand on her shoulder lightened, easing to a gentle stroking of his thumb.
“Only if you want to,” he said, quieter now.
She paused, the patience in his voice halting her. The air itself seemed to shiver as he slid his palm down her arm, letting her go. Letting it go, without pressing or asking too much of her.
And it was like a puzzle piece suddenly turning in her mind, a link that hadn’t been there just a second before clicking jarringly, unexpectedly into place.
Maybe their expiration date didn’t have to be a constraint. Maybe it was a kind of freedom unto itself.
She didn’t have to tell him everything—no way in hell she ever would. But there were pieces she could let him know, parts of herself she could give away without toppling the careful, precarious tower she’d built. Because when this was over, when they left this island, he could take those pieces with him. She wouldn’t have to live with the version of herself he ended up with. It could be just for now.
For this handful of weeks they had, she didn’t have to carry it all alone.
She grabbed at him, curling a hand around his wrist before he could retreat any farther. She held him there. He went still.
“Jo?”
“She died. When I was really young.” When she was negative seven minutes old, if you trusted the birth and death certificates. “I don’t remember her at all.”
“Oh God.”
“It’s fine. It’s just…” What?
Just the precipitating incident that had led to the rest of her life.
“It doesn’t have to be fine.” He turned his wrist inside her grip, getting his hand around hers, making it so she was the one being held on to. Maybe so they were holding each other. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. I wouldn’t have brought it up if—”
“No, really.” She lifted her head and turned so she was facing him, because… because it was fine. She wasn’t lying. She felt okay. Way more okay than she’d ever thought she would when she’d imagined someone prying this from her.
She managed a half-smile as she gazed at him, and the tension in his shoulders deflated by a fraction. Grasping her hand, he brought it up to his mouth and kissed the knuckles. “I am so sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for.”
One side of his brow quirked up. “That’s a phrase people say when they’re expressing their condolences. You know that, right?”
“Of course.” The words came out a little shakier than she wanted them to.
Lowering their hands, he cradled her palm in both of his, there in the space between their knees. Rubbed his thumbs across her knuckles.
And she could almost taste the decision he was making about whether or not to press—about how many assumptions he should make.
Finally, he settled on, “That must have been so hard for you.”
A raw ghost of a laugh bit at her throat. He had no clue.
After another long moment, he asked, voice careful and calm, “So how did you grow up, then?”
She could’ve kissed him. The phrasing was so neutral. No implicit questions about a father or a family, no expectations about a kind of life he must’ve thought she should’ve led.
She restrained herself. Kissing would be easy; kissing would be fun. It’d just be a distraction.
Shrugging, she unfurled her hand, stroking her fingertips over the exposed lines along the insides of his wrists. “It was just me and my dad.” Ripples of low, subverted anger crushed against her ribs, but she kept it in. Kept it just to the facts. “He was… not around a lot, honestly. When he did show up, it was mostly to tell me I was doing something wrong. He’s a scientist, too. A professor.” And they both knew plenty about what that kind of life was like. “It was a lot of nannies and day care. But none of them stuck around for very long.”
His thumbs dug into her skin even harder, but it wasn’t like being constrained. It was… grounding. Nice.
“That sounds lonely.” Nothing about his tone said he was surprised.
It opened up a tattered place in her heart, one she’d always curled around, teeth bared, biting and ready to defend. She’d never imagined it was anything but obvious. She was such a cliché. Daddy issues and mommy issues, and all of them meshing into the savage scar that was her way of holding the rest of the world at bay.