Underneath the watching was the thing I was not looking at directly, the thing that had arrived in the gym doorway and was now sitting in my chest like a stone that had changed shape overnight.
I was attracted to Nathan Cross.
Not—okay. I knew I'd noticed him. I'd been noticing him for months in the way you noticed things you were pretending not to notice, the jaw, the hands, his attention, the soap. I'd been filing all of it underproximityandmedical contextandit's fine, it doesn't mean anything.
Turns out, it meant something.
I looked at Leo, who had appeared on the stool beside me and was watching me with his warm brown eyes.
You’re on your own, his expression said.
"Not a word," I said.
Leo purred.
Cross set a mug in front of me. His fingers and mine were on the mug at the same time for half a second — the warmth of it, the edge of his thumb against mine — and then he let go and turned back to the counter and I sat there and thought about nothing, very deliberately, with great focus and discipline.
"How did I get to the bed last night?" I asked. Casual. Purely informational.
"You walked," he said. "With assistance."
"Right." I looked at the mug. "Oh, sorry, I don't drink tea.”
"I don't have coffee."
"You don't have—" I looked at the counter. The kettle. The dedicated tea shelf. The complete and total absence of anything that had ever considered becoming coffee. "At all?"
"At all," Cross said, without apology.
I looked down at the tea.
At the counter, Cross cracked an egg. Considered it. Cracked another one. The stove made a sound I wasn't sure it was supposed to make.
"You cook?" I said.
"I'm cooking," he said, which was technically a different answer.
Something in the pan did something alarming. Cross addressed it with the same precise attention he gave everything, which was either going to fix it or make it significantly worse. I watched him and thought about the gym and the bicep curls andwhat is wrong with meand the warm brown eyes of the cat beside me and the complete absence of coffee in this apartment.
I picked up the tea.
It smelled fine. It was hot.
"It’s been fun," I said. “Or at least it’s been interesting, but I should go ahead and head home. Lots to do today, you know how it is. I’ll call a taxi and—"
"No,“ said Cross, and turned the heat down on whatever was happening in the pan. “No, you won’t.”
8
"No?”
Cross looked over his shoulder at me. “That’s what I said. You will clear your schedule and continue to be monitored today. By me.”
Oh hell no.
I looked at Cross standing at his counter in his kitchen in his apartment where I had woken up this morning and made a series of discoveries about myself that I was not prepared to spend an entire day in close proximity to.
Being a hundred percent real, I had no intention of sticking around thinking about how I was attracted to a man who hated my very existence.
