“Me and the entire female population, I’m sure, but we don’t need to feed that ego any further, Mr. Vaughn.”
And I’m not joking. He is perfect, and he is here, withme, someone so far from perfect that I genuinely cannot see what he does when he looks my way.
The thought must be written all over my face, because he opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, his eyes searching mine, and I cut him off with a kiss before a single word can escape.
I know who I am. I have my brain, and I’m funny sometimes, and I have my father’s eyes, which are pretty enough. But that’s it. Pretty. Not breathtaking. Not the kind of thing that stops a man like Silas Vaughn in his tracks and makes him forget himself. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing that leaves you breathless.
He seems to catch that I don’t want to go there, because he closes his mouth, something quiet and careful settling over his expression. I spot the bathroom across the room and make a run for it, grateful for the excuse to put a door between me and whatever that conversation would have been.
When I come back, he’s settled into his armchair, scrolling through something on his phone, and the moment has passed. Or at least we’re both pretending it has.
I settle back onto the couch, and as the first raindrops begin to tap against the windows, we just talk.
I tell him about Lupe andtíoFelipe, he tells me about his first job as a professor, and I don’t realize two hours have passed until my twin texts asking how long until I’m home.
“You need to go,” he says, and I don’t miss the irritation in his voice.
I just nod because, in that corner of his living room, it had been easy to forget I shouldn’t be here with him at all.
He walks me to the door, but before he opens it, he catches my hand and turns me toward him.
He kisses me slowly, as if trying to store up from this one until the next, and I do exactly the same.
“You can come here whenever you want, Amalia. I’m always home after eight, except Thursdays,” he murmurs, still close to my mouth.
I feel lightheaded from the way he looks at me, like he still can’t believe he gets to touch me.
“Okay,” I tell him a little shyly.
I don’t know what this is between us, and I don’t think there’s a definition for it, but I know that even though reason is shouting at me to forget his address, my heart has already calculated when I could come back.
Ay, Amalia, how do we keep both the mind and the heart happy at once?
I’m in the faculty lounge going over the seminar schedule when Camila drops into the seat to my right. Her skirt rides up a little more than is appropriate for a professor, and one look at her face tells me she’s in a mood.
“You haven’t called in more than a month. Did something happen, Silas?”
I look at her, remembering now why I shouldn’t have acted on her advances one evening when it hadn’t seemed like a bad idea to spend the night at her place.
I blamed it on too many tequila shots at the time, but in reality Camila is a beautiful woman, and in that moment my head was working normally.
Now, the only thing it seems to be thinking about is Amalia’s eyes and how they shine when she comes. How she makes those tiny, breathy sounds or how her fingers dug into my shoulders when she came, and fuck I’m getting hard just remembering.
“Nothing happened, Camila. But I don’t remember agreeing to make that evening into anything ongoing.”
I watch a flicker of vulnerability cross her expression, and I wish I could feel something, but my mind steps in to remind me that she’s a thirty-seven-year-old woman who knew what she was getting into. I didn’t promise her anything. I stopped responding to her messages altogether once I realized that answering was encouraging something I had no intention of following through on.
“Understood,” she says, and there’s something in her voice, a bitterness that makes me frown, but in the next second she’s already out of the lounge.
This is exactly why I don’t do relationships. Things get complicated the moment reason stops speaking over whatever that organ in your chest is doing.
I think about yesterday with Amalia, about how the hours disappeared without me noticing. When her phone went off and I understood she’d have to leave, something shifted in my chest. For a fraction of a second, I almost asked her to stay.
I’ve never spent the night with a woman. Every time, after sex, one of us left, and I never once minded which.
I find myself wondering whether she’ll come by the apartment today or keep her distance. I don’t even know what we are, only that having her around gives me something I don’t have a name for. She has a way of telling stories that pulls you straight into whatever world she’s describing, makes you forget you’re sitting still.
I press the back of my hand to my forehead like I’m checking for a fever because something has to explain this.
