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I was still trying to find something to say when Adam touched my elbow. “Come on, let’s get you home before you catch your death.”
That was when my body abruptly remembered something other than the fleeting pressure of blunt fingers. It remembered how wet it was, and how cold. And I began to shiver.
“Here,” said Adam, “step where I step.”
So I did, picking my way carefully after him, my footsteps cradled by his, somewhere beneath the flood.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder, catching me in the act.
“Nothing…just thinking I feel like a spy. Or that I’m in an action movie. There should b-be theme music.”
“You joke, but as the water table rises, it can sometimes push young crocodiles up through sewer gratings and onto the streets.”31
I stared at him.
He stared back.
“There…there… Are there… I’m sure there aren’t crocodiles in England.”
His face didn’t change.
“Really?” And then I saw how his eyes betrayed him, darkly gleaming.
Unthinkingly I nudged his arm, as though I weren’t bad with strangers, as though we were friends. “You b-bastard. You took advantage of me because you have a trustworthy face.”
He hung his head, but I didn’t believe him for a moment. “I’m sorry, petal.”
“You should be. I was terrified of crocodiles my whole childhood.”
“Aw, really?”
“I thought crocodiles lived under my bed and if my feet hung over the side, they’d get bitten off. So I slept in a ball. I think I still do actually.” Oh God. Shut up. Shut up. “Out of habit, I mean, not crocodiles. I d-don’t think that anymore. Obviously.”
He was quiet a moment. And then, faintly accusingly, “You know that’s adorable, don’t you?”
I tripped hard overadorableand couldn’t think how to answer. So I said nothing at all, and merely enjoyed my few minutes in a dangerous puddle with a man who maybe thought I was adorable.
Although he probably also thought I was profoundly dull. Giving him silence in return for his… Oh God, was heflirtingwith me? It seemed the wrong word for whatever it was he was doing; these small offerings of attention, his thoughts slipped into my hands like a chocolate bar in the playground.
I’d never had to navigate these delicate uncertainties with Marius.Let’s go, had been his first words to me.I want to paint you.
It was the sort of thing you could only get away with saying if you were a beautiful, dark-eyed, tousle-haired eighteen-year-old. He’d taken my hand and led me up the spiral staircase to his oak-walled, canvas-filled rooms, where he had, in fact, painted me. Eventually.
When we reached dry land, Adam’s gaze alighted on my boots.
“Not,” he said, “what I was expecting.”
“B-best I had.”
“Hey, no explanation necessary.”
I stared at my feet, these strangers in purple. “Are you certain?”
He whispered something so softly I could barely hear it. I think he did it deliberately so I had to look at him again, and into his eyes, and all their wickedness and warmth. “W-what was that?”
He just grinned.
“D-did you really use the phrase ‘boot-scootin baby’?”
