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I glare at Theo, who shoves another piece of popcorn into his mouth, shrugging in anahh-well-what-are-you-gonna-do?kind of way. I could legit scream.
I don’t want to be the person who gets the movie turned off for everyone, so I can’t say anything else. I can’t get up and move, either. I’m stuck here, sitting next to him, a storm raging in my chest. He thinks he’s so fucking smart. What can he possibly hope to achieve, coming to sit beside me?
The movie crawls onward, but I’m blind to it now. My focus is pinpointed on the heat rolling off Theo’s body. I pull my elbows in, avoiding the armrests, but that makes very little difference. Theo’s taller than most, and his huge frame barely fits in the chair to begin with. His arm brushes against mine every once in a while. Then his legs fall open and his knee rests against mine. The two points of contact where our bodies touch burn like nothing else. In my head, I’m screaming.
‘He sure does smell good, though,’Rachel’s voice points out.‘I bet it’d feel amazing if he had his arm around you. Imagine howsafeit’d feel with your head resting on his chest, listening to his heartbeat....’
What the fuck is she talking about? I can’t imagine anything that would feellesssafe. I try to blot out the thought of that—being held in the circle of Theo’s arms, nestled up against him—but the idea is like an indelible stain on my soul. Now that I’ve thought it, I can’t scrub it into non-existence. It lingers, pervading my thoughts until it’s the only thing I can think about.
On the screen, Noah and Allie begin to fall in love, but all I can think about is Theo Merchant’s proximity and how easy it would be to reach out and take his hand.
‘Go on. Might as well. Never know. You might enjoy it,’ Rachel urges mischievously.
Why, in the name of all things holy would she be urging me to take his hand? The Rachel I speak to in my head isn’t real. She’s a figment ofmyimagination. I don’t want her to make these comments to me, so why the fuck won’t she quit?
Shut. The hell. Up.
Time drags painfully slowly as the movie plays. Eventually, I grow so accustomed to Theo’s knee resting against my leg that I jump every time he shifts in his seat, reminded that he’s touching me.
After an hour or so, Theo discards his popcorn bag, placing it on the seat on the other side of him…and he casually places his hand on top of my thigh. The sight of the silvery interlacing scars that mar the back of his hand fills me with the perverse desire to reach out and touch them, to see what they feel like.
“What the fuck?” I mouth.
He shakes his head, cupping his other hand to his ear, making a show of not being able to hear me. All right. If he wants to be a dick about this, then fair enough. I’ll be a dick about it, too.
I grab his hand, lift it off my leg, snag his pinkie finger, and wrench it backwards.
“Arrrunghhhpphhh—” He cuts off the strangled sound of pain as quickly as he can, but not quite quickly enough.
“All right. That’s it. Last warning!” Ford snaps. “One more peep out of you and I amdone!”
Theo tries to ease his finger out of my grip, but hell no…I’m not letting go. He’ll need a pair of pliers to loosen the vice-like hold I have on him.
“Sorrell.” His whisper is terse. “Let.Go. Sorrell.”
Yeah, I don’t think so. I tug his finger back a little further, delighting in the sound of his pain when he releases an agonized, deep groan.
Twisting in his seat, Theo grabs me by the back of the neck, pulling me close, so that I can feel his mouth move against my ear when he talks. “Do you want to know about Henry or not?”
A cruel, calculating trick. He hasn’t mentioned the name Henry since he told me to ask Ruth about him, my first day here. My own stubbornness has prevented me from asking for more information. I originally chose to believe that Ruth would have told me about him if he was important in any way, or evenrealfor that matter, but now I’m not so sure. Too many weeks have gone by without contact with Ruth or Falcon House that I don’t know what I’m supposed to think anymore. So yeah. I guess Idowant to know what Theo has to say about this mystery person.
I let his finger go.
Cold, hard flint flashes in his eyes. He shakes out his hand, flaring his nostrils, then leans in close to whisper in my ear again. “You’re obstinate as fuck, you know that?”
I have to lean into him just as close in order to whisper inhisear. Heaven help me if the smell of him up this close doesn’t make my head spin. I try not to breathe. “Just tell me.”
The left side of Theo’s face flares white, throwing the right into shadow as the scene on the projector screen goes from night to day. For a long second, he just looks at me, frowning…and then he holds up his pinkie finger.
“Kiss it better first.”
I fight back the bark of laughter that rises to the back of my throat. “What are you,five?I’m not kissing your finger better, dumbass.”
“No?” he arches a dark eyebrow coolly at me. “You don’t wanna know about Henry, then?”
“Not if you’re gonna make me coddle you like some kind of half-grown man-baby, no.”
“Oh, rest assured, I amfullygrown,” he rumbles. There’s something indecent about the way he says this—his tone, even though whispered, speaks of indecency.
