"May I come in?" he asks, leaning on the threshold, that amused glint still in his eyes.
"No." I say, even as I find myself stepping back.
He comes in despite my pitiful protest, the way he seems to do everything — unhurried, completely certain of his position, like the world around him bends to his whim, and we're simply moving through the formality of arriving at it.
I step back again, because the alternative is him walking through me, and some part of my body has very strong opinions about being in close proximity with him again. He moves past me into my apartment and looks around, taking note of where I have the candles lit. I close the door and lock the locks. The hallway is cold, and despite the danger that just came into my apartment, even more danger remains outside of it.
"You moved the furniture around," he says casually as he moves to sit on the couch.
I stare at him, confused. "How would you know that?”
He looks at me. Says nothing. And reality crashes down on me instantly, the anger rises so fast it nearly takes the air from my lungs. "You’ve got to be kidding. How dare you. Get out.”
"Alex—"
"You bugged my apartment didn’t you?" I say it quietly, with a bite of animosity; the walls are thin, and yelling will do nothing but bring further attention to us, but the strain of my anger is there in the words. “And now you moved into my building? Afteryou followed me to work and kissed me in the alley. And it was you that left the milk outside my door with my real name on it.” The weight of all of it pressed heavily against my chest. "You have been listening to everything."
"Yes," he says. No apology. Just a clean, solid admission, no remorse.
"Then you need to leave."
"I heard you," he says with a grin. "Three nights ago. After you got home." He holds my gaze across the candlelit apartment, still unmoving. "You said my name."
The heat that climbs my face is immediate and total, and I hate it with every fiber of my being. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You were in the shower," he continues. "You said my name." A pause. "More than once, I might add."
"Get out."
"I couldn't stay away after that," he says, ignoring my demand completely. "I tried. I sat in 4D and I told myself you were a liability and a complication and a variable I needed to manage from a distance, and then I heard you say my name like that and I have not been able to think about anything else since." He moves then, standing, moving toward me. I take a step back, he keeps coming, and I quickly backtrack and find the wall behindme, which is becoming a recurring theme in my interactions with this man. "So here I am."
"Here you are," I say. "In my apartment. That you bugged. Without my permission."
"Permission defeats the purpose of bugging now doesn’t it." He teases with amusement.
"You're not even remotely sorry are you?"
"Would it help if I was?"
"No," I say honestly. “But it would be moral of you to have at least a smidge of remorse about invading my privacy. Again.”
"I'll keep that in mind." He's close now — not alley-close, not wall-close, but close enough that the candlelight catches the angles of his face and the pale of his eyes, and I am very aware that the apartment is dark and small and Evie is not in it and there is no one in the world who knows this man is standing in my living room right now.
"Tell me to leave and I'll leave," he says. "Mean it, and I'll go."
"Leave," I say.
"Say it like you mean it, and I will." His voice is soft, and that, coupled with his accent, does things to my body that it shouldn’t.
I look at him. He looks at me. The candles do what candles do — they flicker, making everything softer, closer, more intimate. They strip away the logic of bright lights and create an ambiance that causes my usually rational thoughts to run amok. Making him something I want to reach for rather than run from, and I hate that, I hate all of it, I hate that my body has not once responded to this man the way self-preservation requires.
"You had no right," I chastise. "Whatever you think this is, whatever you've decided about me — you had no right to listen to my life without my permission. To sit across the hall and listen." My voice is steady, despite the emotions raging within. It is always steady when I need it to be. "I have a daughter. Do you understand what that means? I have a child to think of, to care for, in this apartment and you?—"
"I know," he says.
"Then you know why I can't—" I stop.
"Can't what?" He takes another step, caging me against the wall now, the familiar geometry of it, his eyes piercing my soul, his body close.
