Cross’s blue eyes met mine.
Something had changed. Something settling over his expression like a door closing in a room you thought you were welcome in.
He looked at me kneeling on my own hardwood floor and something moved through his eyes that I couldn't name and didn't like the shape of.
"Nathan—"
"I should go," he said.
He pushed off the wall. Straightened his clothes with the automatic precision of a man reassembling himself.
Of course.
This wasn’t how Nathan Cross did things.
He was probably already regretting everything we’d just done. Cross looked like he was putting himself back together piece by piece, like none of this had happened. He’d shown up here to tell me off in the first place, and then I’d made it worse. He had a career, a reputation, rules.
I was the one who had screwed up things. Again.
"Like, this whole—" I moved my hand vaguely at the space between us, at the apartment, at the general situation. "We're adults. Nobody's reading into anything. It's not a big deal. It doesn’t have to mean anything."
Something shifted in his expression.
“Right,” he said. One word.
“It doesn’t have to be weird,” I added quickly. “Or complicated. I get it. We just—” I shrugged. “We had a moment. It doesn't have to be—we don't have to make this into a whole—"
"Wesley."
I stopped.
Cross was looking at me with that look. The one I still don't have language for.
"I understand," he said.
Two words this time. Each one completely level. The way he said everything, precise and final, like he was reporting a fact.
What the hell did he understand because I didn’t even understand what I’d just said? But something about the way he said it made me want to take back every word I'd said in the last thirty seconds, which I couldn't do.
With his shirt untucked he was the most disheveled I had ever seen Nathan Cross and I was blowing it in real time and I couldn't find the words, which had never once in my life been aproblem I had. Words were the thing I always had. Words were the whole system.
The system had just used itself against me, and I didn't fully understand how yet.
"Get some sleep," he said. Not unkind. Something more tired than either of those things, something with more weight to it than the wall had ever had, which was worse somehow, which landed somewhere worse. "Drink water. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Nathan—"
He looked at me one more time.
That look. There was something in it that might have been—I don't know. I don't know what it was.
He nodded once. Walked to the door. Let himself out.
The door clicked shut.
14
Here’s what I knew:
