I keep my eyes on her. I always keep my eyes on her — it’s the one thing my body does without asking, and a man standing over her table doesn’t change it. So I get the back of him in pieces. Tall. Broad. Blond. The easy stance of a man who’s never had to earn a room.
Then he turns enough for the side of his face, and I know him.
Kyle.
It goes through me before I can stop it, low and ugly and nothing I’m proud of —that’s the one who had her.The one who got years I didn’t. The one she let in. It’s there and it’s hot and it has nothing to do with whether he’s a problem. I shove it down hard, because it’s mine to deal with and not worth the breath, and I don’t get to be that man while she’s sitting right there.
I shove it down.
Then her face drops.
The light in her eyes goes out. Her shoulders pull in small. And every part of me that just wasted a second being jealous goes cold and quiet and points at one thing.
She’s scared.
I don’t care who he is anymore. I don’t care that he had her. He’s frightening her, now, ten feet from me, and the jealousy’s gone like it was never there, burned off the second her face changed.
I catch pieces over the noise.San Diego. Just visiting. Crazy, running into you.Her voice comes back flat and careful, all the give pressed out of it — and I know the difference between her real voice and the one she uses to make people stop, and this is neither. This is a third one. I’ve never heard it. I hate it on contact.
She starts packing up like she didn’t just sit down. Eyes going to the door.
Then he leans in and puts a finger to her cheek.
The table shifts under my hand.
Solid wood, bolted to a cast base, and it moves where I’m gripping it. I feel it give and I make myself let go. Not now. Whatever that is, it waits.
She jerks back from his hand. He smiles like the flinch was the point — and she’s already on her feet gathering her things, and he steps into the space she made standing up, and then closer, and there’s a wall behind her and he knows there’s a wall behind her, and she says—
Kyle. Get off of me.
I’m up.
I don’t remember standing. I’m already across the room, and the only piece of myself I’m running right now is my voice, and I keep it level.
“Ella.”
Just that. Not a word for him. One for her.
Her eyes come to mine and the change is instant — the line of her shoulders breaks, and she lets out a breath, small and fast, like she’s been holding it since he walked up.
She went looking for the exit and got me instead. The panic broke.
No time for that. Later.
“Kyle was just leaving,” she says.
Kyle looks at me for the first time. I close the last of the distance and put my arm around her shoulders, and she settles into my side, and I do not let myself think about how that feels with him standing there. There’s a job in front of me and the job is getting her out.
“Oh.” The smile goes to something worse. “I see how it is.”
She starts to say his name.
“Couldn’t keep it in your pants.” He says it to her, watching me. “Good to know you downgraded.”
The room goes quiet, or I do. Same result.
I keep my eyes on her. Looking at him is a decision I can’t afford to make yet, because I know what’s on the other side of it.
