Page 47

He sat back up with a sigh, tossed the phone beside him, and decided he needed water.

Or a sedative.

Water, probably.

The upstairs hall was dim except for the weak bulb over the landing, which turned the wallpaper the color of coffee-stained teeth. The bathroom door stood open at the far end, mirror glinting faintly. The house gave one of its little settling cracks from somewhere inside the walls, like a knuckle flexing in the dark.

Hakeem padded toward the stairs, rubbing a hand over his face.

He was halfway down the hall when a voice behind him said, “You look like you’re in the middle of a thought you resent.”

Hakeem made a sound so undignified it looped back around to charming, and jerked hard enough to smack his shoulder against the wall.

Antonio stood in the doorway of his own room holding a mug in one hand.

The hall was narrow, leaving him barely any room for his shape. His hair was more disordered than before, and just as disarming. He looked unbearably domestic for a man Hakeem had almost shrieked at in mortal terror.

“Jesus Christ,” Hakeem snapped, hand over his chest. “Do you move through the house by sonar?”

Antonio glanced down the hall as if considering the architecture. “The floorboards announce you about six seconds in advance.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“The point,” Hakeem said, recovering posture first and dignity second, “is that you cannot appear in doorways like an omen.”

Antonio took a slow sip from the mug, maintaining eye contact. “That’s a new one.”

“Yeah, well, you’re welcome.”

His pulse was still climbing back down from his throat. Antonio’s gaze moved over his face once, precise and unreadable.

“You scare easily for a horror actor,” Antonio said.

Annoyance and embarrassment hit him simultaneously, because it was too close to the truth. Hakeem had the disloyal sense that Antonio probably knew exactly how he looked right now: flushed, tense, thinly hostile in the way he always got when he felt caught off-balance.

“I do not,” Hakeem said.

Antonio lifted his mug slightly. “You just hit the wall.”

“That wall came at me.”

Antonio’s mouth tilted. “Well then, you should press charges.”

Hakeem felt a traitorous laugh almost escape him. He buried it quickly. He was still too aware of the notebook downstairs, the lines taking shape, the fact of his own phrasing sitting in Antonio’s handwriting somewhere on a page.

“You’re very funny for someone committed to inducing heart failure,” he said.

Antonio leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “You were glaring at the carpet on your way down the hall. It seemed intimate.”

Hakeem narrowed his eyes. “You say things like that on purpose.”

Antonio’s expression did not change much, but his attention shifted. “Like what?”

“Things that sound…” Hakeem gestured vaguely, because the true answer was like you know how to place your voice exactly where it’ll stay with me, but he was not giving Antonio that for free. “Calculated.”

A beat passed.