She could’ve cut at that. She didn’t.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, that restraint worked on me harder than any of her teasing.
Crystal looked away first, toward the drawn curtains. “I had one of my dad’s old shop rags for years. It was disgusting. Oil, metal dust, probably tetanus. I kept it in a zip bag like it was a relic.”
I looked at the anchor-and-compass ink peeking over her shoulder strap.
“Your dad had a shop?” I asked.
Her fingers tightened around the water bottle.
I’d stepped too close to something without knowing the shape of it.
“He fixed things,” she said.
That was all.
I let it be all.
The quiet thinned between us. The banter had covered a lot. Too much. Without it, the low hum of the air conditioner and the soft movement of her breathing made the space feel smaller.
Crystal set the water down. “I need to lie down.”
“Take the side away from the door.”
“I was planning to levitate.”
“Crystal.”
Her name cut out sharper than I intended.
She stilled.
Then she looked at me with a flash of something I couldn’t read because I wasn’t looking for anything except defiance.
“If you say my name like that again,” she said, “I’m going to start charging you.”
Heat hit low and hard.
I stood because sitting still had become impossible. “Boots off. You sleep in your clothes. You don’t touch the window, the lamp cord, the phone, my keys, or me.”
Her lips parted. “That was a very specific list.”
“You’re a very specific problem.”
“And you say you’re not romantic.”
I took my jacket off and put it over the back of the chair. My keys went in my front pocket. My phone stayed under my thigh when I sat again. The room key went on the table within my reach and out of hers. I didn’t make a production of any of it.
Crystal watched every bit of it anyway.
She worked her boots off slowly, using her hands and the edge of the bed. The first boot hit the carpet with a dull thud. The second followed. Her bare legs stretched under the ugly motellight, the flower tattoo curling from ankle to lower calf, dark ink over pale skin.
I looked away too late.
She saw that too.
“You know,” she said, “for a man who insists this isn’t romantic, you spend a lot of time staring at my legs.”
