“I’m sorry. I’m trying to be better about that. But I can’t fathom being able to do any of these items with you.”
“I can understand being weary, but you can ask my best friend, Levi, and he’ll tell you I’m a helper.” He shrugged in such a sweet, disarming way that for a second, I really considered his offer. “What’s it going to take for you to see that I’m sincere?”
He’d been watching me closely when his phone vibrated on the desk between us.
There was a text from someone named Mason. I hadn’t meant to look, but, of course, I did.
Pace. Bonfire. ASAP.
He looked up at me, seeing that I’d read it too. He was already bustling into action as he joked, “This is why I wore the pants.”
I sat back, feeling mostly relieved that he was leaving. The release of tension was enough, and I laughed at his joke.
His smile beamed back at me. He looked at me a beat too long. My laugh faded as he seemed to decide something.
“Come with,” he said. He grabbed my jacket and his baseball hat from where he’d hung them on a hook by the door.
“What. No. The shop. I can’t just—” There were a hundred reasons I couldn’t just go. The fact that I hadn’t spent half the day mentally preparing to leave the house was at big fat number one.
He wasn’t listening. He grabbed my hands and tugged me toward the exit.
“Pace—” My voice grew high-pitched with panic.
“It’s after nine. El won’t care if you close.”
That wasn’t the point. That was my only solid excuse to stay; the rest revolved heavily around my neurosis.
I felt my mouth opening and closing like I was a dying fish out of water, desperate to find any other excuse not to go with him. My thoughts spun out so fast I couldn’t even follow all thedifferent fears. Pace and I together. People staring. All the looks. All the gossip. I would say the wrong thing.
I was dizzy, and things were happening too fast. I pulled myself away.
“I have to think about this.” I dug my heels, balled fists at my temples.
Just inside the door, he stopped and turned to me. He took a step back to reach me and softly pulled my hands from my head.
“Don’t think,” he said.
He carefully put my coat on me, threading one arm through at a time. He zipped me up and then gently pulled my hair out of the collar so that it wouldn’t be tugged. His gaze held on to mine, like a lifeline, the entire careful process.
The woman was too stunned to speak.
Everything he did pinned me to this moment. It was like my entire body unclenched. There was only his easy touch, the sight of him, the heady scent of him ...
“Just follow me,” he added.
I followed his commands like a robot. Watching myself outside my body as I let him lead me out and locked the door.
“We aren’t done with this conversation yet, and I need to go. Easy solution is we go together,” he said. He patted the shoulders of my jacket before dropping his hands on them and holding them there as if I would run away without warning. They were so noticeable, his fingertips squeezed lightly on my shoulder blades. It was all so intense. And I wondered if he was experiencing any of it.
“It’s okay, we can be done,” I mumbled. “A quick memory wipe for both of us, and we can pretend none of this ever happened.”
He laughed, but was already guiding me in the direction of the town square. My protests died on my lips as I was dragged into the cold fall night before I could get a grip.
I was both terrified and hyperaware of his touch as we left the safety of my home.
10
Pace
