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Their temples cracked together. Loud enough that Everly was sure the camera caught it. Or at least her sharp yelp as pain shot through her skull and white stars burst behind her eyes.
When her vision cleared, she saw James cradling his forehead with his hand. He looked as dazed as she felt.
“Are you okay?” they asked at the same time.
He was smiling sheepishly, and heat flushed her cheeks. If they didn’t already know each other, this would have qualified as a meet cute. Or a meet awkward at least. For a second, Everly could almost imagine telling her friends about it someday, she and James sitting across fromthem in a restaurant booth, holding hands like they were molded only to fit each other.
But that pleasant image shattered as reality set in, and she remembered Logan was still there. Watching. Filming.
Slinking off her chair, she landed on her knees and cowered under her desk. She pretended to be cleaning her mess, but really she was trying to grab a moment of privacy to reset.
Until James crouched next to her.
“Sorry I’m a disaster,” she mumbled.
James shook his head, the corners of his eyes squinting against his smile. “You’re doing great. I don’t know how anyone can act normally with a camera around.” He nudged her so gently in the arm that she wasn’t sure how she was still in solid form. Something about a strong guy touching someone like they had to be careful not to break them always squeezed her in all the right places.
He set his pile on the desk. “I know you have a system for these, so I’m not going to try to put them back.”
“Smart.” She hoped she sounded teasing, even as her cheeks reinvented the color red. She never knew James noticed her desk organization. Or anything about her besides her design skills.
“I think that’s everything.” He rose to his feet and wiped his palms on his pants leg.
“Me too.” Everly slid back into her chair.
He grinned again. This guy probably smiled in his sleep. “Time to go ice my head.” He tapped his temple, then grimaced like there was a bruise.
“I will pray for no subdermal hematomas.” Good god, she was doing it again. Forgetting to think before she spoke. She watched too many damn medical dramas with Becca.
The expression on James’s face as he walked away made her want a panic room in which she could hide from herself.
Everly wasn’t one of those people who could let embarrassment roll off their backs. She was an obsesser. A re-liver. She would replay this moment over and over in her head like a new song she’d just heard until nothing else existed.
She was so lost in humiliation hell that she didn’t realize Logan had come closer until he cleared his throat.
Within range, of course, to have captured that entire encounter with James.
Everly silently begged someone to throw her a bone and cut a hole in the time-space continuum that she could fall into.
“You were doing good until that whole hematoma thing. What was that?” There wasn’t so much as a smile in his voice to suggest he might be joking.
“Thank you for the unsolicited opinion.” She slotted her felt-tip pens in their black floral mug with a little more force than was strictly necessary. Suddenly, now that it didn’t seem to matter, she was doing a great job not looking at the camera. “Please don’t use any of that.”
“I’m just the guy with the camera. I don’t make those calls.”
She sighed. “Then you couldn’t have helped me out?”
“You seemed to have it handled.”
“No, I mean, leave me some dignity. You don’t need to recordeveryone of my awkward moments. Some could conveniently disappear from the footage.”
Talking to the monitor instead of Logan felt like addressing a ghost. Or an imaginary friend. Someone nonexistent. It wasn’t like they could use this part anyway, since he was in it.
She faced him head-on.
The camera obscured his expression. She could only see his left eye and a corner of his bearded cheek. He looked colder this way; everything that had felt softer, easier to poke at before James had appeared was nowhidden behind plastic and glass. She was surprised by how alone it made her feel.
“It is the sacred duty of the cameraman to record all but not get involved,” he said.
