Page 4 of Right With You
But I’d also seen her grow quieter. Sometimes, she seemed like a shell of a person, like she’d retreated into herself, and I wondered how her closest friends weren’t more concerned. Perhaps they were, and maybe they’d all talked to her, but the quiet persisted. Elise Cordero wasn’t a shy woman. She wasn’t quiet … except when suddenly, she was.
It was a peculiar sensation to witness oneself in someone else, like they held up a mirror to certain qualities. Of course we had many differences. I didn’t have her past, nor she mine, but I related to what I suspected was a lonely way of living. This tendency to present oneself in a way that kept the majority of questions—and therefore truths—at bay.
Even with Barbie, Stone, and Beast as close friends, there were key parts of me they didn’t know.
Glazed had given Elise new life, it seemed to me, but whenever that useless idiot was skulking around…
Rage simmered in my gut at the thought of him.
“I—yeah. I am.” She cleared her throat, and my ire diffused until nothing but concern remained at the sound of her voice.
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” I offered, not sorry at all, but needing to acknowledge I had butted in.
Brushing some dark hair that’d fallen in her face away with a shaking hand, she rushed to say, “No, please. I mean, thank you. I—I’m sorry. I’m just…” Her lips pinched, and she shook her head.
I was not a man easily moved to violence, but right now I almost wished the coward would wander back and try to touch her so I’d have my excuse.
“You’re alright. You’re safe.” Saying the words wouldn’t make them true, but I couldn’t stop myself from supplying them and hoping she’d recognize the truth.
She exhaled sharply. “Yes. Thank you.”
“You could get a restraining order. He assaulted you.”
“He didn’t actually touch me. You stopped him.” Her espresso gaze flicked up to meet mine and held there.
A slow drop of melted chocolate heat ran down my sternum. “I’ll make a statement about what I saw.”
She was already shaking her head. “No. Thank you.”
“I’m happy to if you change your mind.”
“Thank you. And, I’m sorry, uh…” Her face dropped, gaze on her feet, then rose to reconnect our eyes again. “Honestly, I don’t know what to call you.”
“What would you like to call me?”
It was a genuine question. I wanted to hear my name on her lips, but she’d never said it. In fairness, she may not even know my actual name since so many people in Silverton knew me by my Saint, and former military, nickname.
She huffed and brushed her hands down the apron layered over a soft, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. “Your name would be nice.”
Her brows tented, seemingly baffled by my refusal to offer her my name.
“You know it, don’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do I?”
I smiled, enjoying the way her mood had lightened, how her eyes danced with teasing merriment now, and I wanted it to stay put. “Do you?”
She bit her lip, a smile tugging at her full mouth. “Is it… shortcake?”
I laughed outright.
Her smile widened. “Wait, no. Croissant?”
I mock-frowned. “Are you making fun of my French heritage?”
Her mouth dropped open and she reached for me, grasping my wrist in her small hand before she released it just as suddenly, glancing at the audacious limb with an odd expression before speaking. “No, no. Never. I—of course not. I was just teasing you.”
“Teasing me, Elise?” Saying her name seemed to flip a switch, and electrical currents snapped between us, just like they always had when our eyes met. It’d struck me the first time I ever held her gaze and it had never stopped. Sometimes, I had to remind myself not to linger there or I’d incinerate. There was nothing between us, a fact I should’ve remembered more often.
