Page 23 of Locked & Loaded

“Are you trying to make this more awkward than it already is?” he asks, and there’s something in his voice I haven’t heard before—almost amused, underneath the disbelief.

“A little,” I admit.

He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t shut me down either. I can feel his attention on me in the dark, and somehow that makes me stupidly brave.

“Besides,” I say, my pulse jumping to my throat, “maybe all my angry glaring was something else too.”

There’s a pause.

Then Rodriguez says, his voice careful, “Yeah? Like what?”

I shrug, my whole body tight like a wire.

“I think I’ve been sort of having a bisexual awakening these past three months and just didn’t know it,” I say, my voice quieter now, less sure, like I’m testing the words in my mouth. “So that’s bad timing.” I swallow. “You know. For me.”

Rodriguez goes completely quiet.

The silence stretches for five seconds, then ten, long enough for my stomach to knot and for me to wonder if I’ve finally gone too far. This might be where he tells me he isn’t interested anymore and that I’m being inappropriate.

He shifts again, and this time I hear the mattress rustle under him as he turns onto his side. The moonlight catches the line of his jaw, the shadow under his cheekbone, the dark of his eyes.

He’s looking at me.

“I thought you were straight,” he says.

It’s not a question.

“I thought you were too,” I say, then let out a self-conscious laugh. “I thought I was too.”

He doesn’t answer. For a moment, we just lie there, watching each other through the dark. His eyes are on my face, and mine are on his, and neither of us says anything.

Fine. Apparently, this is the part where I go all in.

I sigh.

“I’m not sure what I am, really,” I say. “I’ve never been with a guy.” I pause, because my throat feels too tight around the rest of it. “But I think I have a crush.” Another pause, this one worse. “On you. I think that’s why I was glaring.”

Silence.

Rodriguez is still looking at me. I can feel his stare like something physical, unblinking in the dark.

“Did you get a brain injury from the heatstroke or something?” he asks after a moment.

Well, this is not ideal.

I snort. “Ouch. That hurts.”

He doesn’t laugh. His voice, when it comes, is quieter, stripped of the sarcasm.

“I’m not sure if you’re serious or making fun of me, Holm,” he says.

The honesty in it catches me off guard. Rodriguez doesn’t do vulnerable—not without a fight—and hearing it in his voice makes something in me soften.

“I’m serious,” I say.

I don’t elaborate. I don’t try to explain the last three months, or the way I’ve been watching him without knowing why, or the fantasy that ambushed me earlier and hasn’t left me alone since. I just say it and hope he hears the truth in it.

He watches me for another moment, and I can feel the weight of his attention like he’s waiting for me to change my mind.