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“What about?” I’m tired of Josie’s prognostications and hexes. It seems to me we’d all be better off if she’d stop running her mouth. Still, I’m interested despite myself.
“She said you’d already met your soulmate and made a bad impression on her,” Leonard points out.
“Yes,” I say dryly. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“You assumed she was talking about Phoebe.”
“Daphne,” I correct.
He waves a hand as if it was an honest mistake. “Daphne. But what if she was talking about Mira?”
I’ll be damned if he hasn’t raised an interesting point—one that’s been itching at the back of my head but refusing to make itself known. But I don’t want him to know I find it interesting. Leonard requires no encouragement.
“Mira didn’t seem too into you before she moved in here,” he continues. “But she’s been looking at you all night like you’re the last cookie in the pack. Something’s going on between you two, not that I’m surprised.”
“You’re not?” I ask becauseI’mfucking surprised. I ask myself why, and the answer’s something like this—if she hadn’t been stuck in that elevator and now this apartment with me, I doubt she would ever have given me a second look.
“No, she’s a tiger. That’s exactly what a man like you needs.”
I feel a little crestfallen, maybe because I already know she’s exactly what I need, but I’m still unclear on whether I’m exactly what she needs.
Boring. Basic.It’s hard to explain how deeply those words have been burned into my brain. Maybe it’s because I’ve always had the sense that I didn’t belong, and Daphne was only telling me what I already knew, deep down. That even when I try to fit in I do it wrong.
Burke seems to know what I’m thinking, because he says, “And you’re exactly what she needs.”
“An anchor?” I ask, lifting my eyebrows.
“A lighthouse.”
Leonard snaps his fingers. “What he said.”
ChapterTwenty-Five
Mira
Everyone just left, and Danny and I are standing next to each other in front of the closed door. I feel an aching awareness of him. I realize I’m still holding the doorknob, like maybe I’m about to run—or hobble—out, so I release it and turn toward him. I feel overwhelmed by the day, and by the feelings that are beating through me like a second heart. I’ve been wanting to talk everything through with him, to touch him, but now I don’t know what to do. “Is this awkward? It feels awkward.”
“I’m sorry I had to go outside for a while. It was…”
“Too much,” I blurt. “It was the Charades, wasn’t it? I knew you wouldn’t be into Charades, but I’ll be honest, I really wanted to see how Deacon would do. You know, because of all the undercover work he probably wasn’t supposed to tell us about.”
He takes my hand—and it’s trembling, fucking trembling—and squeezes it. “It wasn’t the Charades so much as it was me. It’s like I have this meter, and when it’s full…it’s full. Once that happens, I need to be by myself for a while, somewhere quiet.” His lips lift slightly. “But the Charades didn’t help.”
Laughter bursts from me, even though I know he’s telling me something important. Something I need to listen to. “He was really good, though. You should have heard this voice he did for Macaulay Culkin.”
“I wouldn’t call myself an expert at party games, but I thought you weren’t supposed to talk during Charades,” he says, his hand still holding mine.
“He wasverydrunk.” My whole body is aware of where we’re touching, even though it’s such a small surface area compared to the skin of my body, which is aching. Full of need for him to touch and stroke it.
“I’m sorry about all of this, Mira,” he says, squeezing my hand. “I don’t like having you in the middle of this situation.”
“Deacon said it would be a bad idea to change things up now.”
“He also thinks Charades is a talking game. I’m not convinced he’s the best judge.”
“You know he’s right about this,” I say, frustrated. “Besides, Big Mike’s an undercover cop, Danny. He’s not a danger to me.”
His hand starts moving against mine, tracing shapes into it, like he’s never content just to touch something—he needs to know it. It’s wonderful and also distracting.
