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He stopped them halfway across the walkway and braced his hands on the rail. Gazing at his profile, her heart was in her throat. He’d dealt with a lot over the past day, and he’d handled all of it like a hero. She didn’t give a lot of thought to those kinds of things, but she liked video games for reasons beyond the strategy and tech—heroism called to any heart that had room for the notion.
She slid an arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. He had his chin dipped to his chest. His energy pulled hers in, and she felt it rise up in him. What they both had kept pushing down, all these long hours.
All that could have gone wrong.
How close to the edge it had been.
Aubrey’s capture, her father’s willingness to let her go.
Tiger’s arms were around her, hers around him, holding onto one another. Drawing strength and stability. But then he pushed back. He still had his hands on her upper arms, his grip suddenly tighter. He stared down into her face. “Use that voice you use for yourself. The Southern girl one. No celebrity shit.”
“What do you want me to say?” she typed, turning it on.
“I wanted to confirm how wrong I was. What I said to you in the club, when I asked you to use ‘your’ voice. That’s not your voice. It never has been. People associate it with you, because it’s how they can connect to you. I connected to you when you used a different kind of communication. That’s what I hear…feel, as your voice.”
He stepped back, the act of letting her go a visible effort. She didn’t want him to stop touching her, but the deliberate way he did it told her he had an important reason for establishing the space between them.
“I’m a grown man, Skye. I know how to handle my own shit, my own heartbreak, and not take it out on the woman who doesn’t want what I want. But I need to know where I stand with you. Was all of it just because I was a guy who’d lost his hearing, and you had the skillset to help me get through it?”
He put a hand over hers before she could start typing. “I’m not saying you were faking anything. I think it got deep for you, too, and bigger than you were expecting. I’m saying if you’re swimming for the edge of the pool, intending to return to dry land because you don’t want to stay in those waters and see howdeep they can go, I need to know that. As I said, I’m not going to judge you for your reasons for that. It will hurt like hell, no lie. And before you cut me off at the knees, I would, respectfully,” a muscle twitched in his jaw, “like to request a fucking reason for you doing it.”
She turned toward the rail, her hand clutching the phone. Her mind was turning, rolling over things to say to answer the question. But her heart was churning, making it hard to think.
She could say they’d been through too much, their emotions too worn out, to do this now. But maybe that was exactly why it needed to be now. When there was no strength for defenses.
“You say it’s done, it’s done,” he said after a long moment, his voice heavy. Her silence had provided him her answer. “As I said, I’ll spend time at another club for a while, to make it easier for both of us. Maybe that smaller place that Dale and Athena use. There’s a mechanic in Algiers who can take good care of your Mustang...”
She slapped her hand down on the rail and then did what she never did.
She lost her grip on the phone.
It bounced against the wood, flipping up and outward. She lunged for it, and the rail hit her hip, stopping her. The phone was already well beyond her reach, twisting and flipping to plop into the murky water and sink to the silty bottom.
Tiger had grabbed her waist when she lunged, probably thinking she might dive after it. He was holding her tight, his front against her back. She closed her hand on the air, made it a fist and brought it down on the rail before she turned and gazed up at him.
He ran his knuckles down her cheek, a lingering touch. There was frustration in his eyes, but also tenderness. A care. Love. In its early stages, but undeniable in its presence. It made thatchurning get worse, threatening to drown her as if she’d fallen and been sucked into the water below, like her phone.
“It’s not your voice,” he reminded her. “Talk to me, Mistress. Tell me you don’t want me. Tell me why you won’t let me all the way inside, when I can goddamn tell you’re falling for me the way I am for you. Why can’t we take that ride together?”
She swallowed. He tried to do that stepping back thing, probably employing the unlikely logic that being stabbed with rejection was better when you weren’t being intimately touched by your assailant. She screwed her hand into the front of his shirt and held him in place.
She had a backup phone in her overnight bag. She always did. Everything on the phone was backed up daily. But she didn’t go get it. She stood with him, closed her eyes, let it all in. And told him the simple truth.
She released him to put her hands in front of herself, one hand positioned above the other, fingers spread, and then jerked them horizontally, short, choppy movements. She did it twice, looking up at him. Three times. Each time, her heart cracked open further, shoving the emotion fully into her expression, out between them. It made her want to run as it took hold of her in a way she didn’t permit. Never.
He put his hands back on her shoulders, thumbs against her throat. “You’re scared,” he said quietly.
She nodded and began to sign. She tried to break it down in gestures he’d be able to understand with his basic knowledge. With signals they’d worked out in session. That had applied to very different things, but he was proving he could make the leaps in logic.
“Scared…do it again. Same. Repeat.” He studied her hands and face, tracking both. “Your other relationships. You thought…you’re scared it’ll turn out the same way.”
“And I can’t handle that. Not with you. Because as much as I thought they mattered…you matter so much more. You’re inside me already. No one ever got there. Not that deep.”
She signed all of that, knowing he would only get some of it, but then she pantomimed stabbing herself in the heart, and his hand closed over her wrist. He pried open her fingers and brought them to his lips, pressing them to her palm as he always did. “It will hurt too much if it happens again,” he said, breaking it down to the one sentence that covered it all.
Yes.And, much as she hadn’t wanted to admit it, when his hearing had started to return, she’d felt as if he was leaving her alone in a place she'd gotten used to him being.
He dropped to one knee, the way he did, and kissed her palm again. A sob choked her. He put a hand on her face. She liked that he was tall enough to do that, touch her cheek while on his knees. Connect with her.
