There was an electric pull in her belly every time he touched her. A low ache now lived between her thighs ever since the stage floor and was getting worse the longer he stood this close with his ice-blue eyes on her like she was… like she was a person. Not an asset. A person.
She looked him dead in the eye.
"I'm fine."
He went still.
Not a flinch, not a reaction, just stillness. The way a lake freezes from the surface down. He held her gaze and waited. Didn't blink. Didn't speak. Just stood there in the falling snow and looked at her with those pale eyes that she suddenly, horribly remembered could detect lies, and the realization hit her like a spotlight turning on in a dark room.
He knew. Heknewshe wasn't fine before she finished saying it. Mentharians sensed deception the way she sensed pitch.
She'd just lied to a man who could feel lies.
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
He didn't call her on it. He didn't press. He just held her gaze one breath longer, and the look in his eyes wasn't judgment or accusation. It was something quieter. Something like recognition.
"Goodnight, Phoeb?—"
He stopped.
The syllable hung in the cold air between them. His jaw flexed. She watched his teeth come together behind his closed lips.
"Goodnight, Miss Calloway."
He corrected himself. Deliberately. The correction landed on her like pressing on a bruise.
He turned and walked into the snow, his boots silent on the path.
She went inside, closed the door, and leaned her forehead against it.
The wood was cool against her skin. Not cold like him, but enough to ground her, to give her a surface to press against while she breathed.
He was walking away from her right now. Through the snow, back to wherever he lived in this place. He would be at her door tomorrow. And the day after that. He would walk her home and hand her tea and call her Miss Calloway and almost say her name. Night after night. Close enough to touch, the distance absolute.
She pressed her forehead harder against the door.
Her vocal warm-up started automatically. A low hum cycling through her range, the sound vibrating in her chest and her sinuses and filling the quiet of the empty room.
The tea sat warm in her stomach. The way she liked it, and she had never told him.
Her accent had slipped out in front of him, and he hadn't flinched.
He'd almost said her name.
She hummed louder and pressed her palms flat against the door until the cold faded from the wood.
five
. . .
The slip playedon a loop in his head the next morning.
Phoeb—
One syllable. Half her name, bitten off a fraction too late, hanging in the cold air between them like breath-fog he couldn't take back. She'd heard it. Her eyes had widened by a millimeter, and he'd over-corrected withMiss Callowayand walked away into the snow with frost climbing his wrists inside his gloves.
I'm fine.
