Page 14 of Under The Twilight Rainfall
Oh.
He meant ‘catch up’ like—Christ.
I throw Jonah a quick farewell, promising to text him—which we both know is a lie—and turn in the direction Dex stalked off to. It only takes a minute, because as promised he only moved a few stalls over and is picking his way through a bag of—
“Popcorn, really? All this food and you choose popcorn?”
He shrugs and stuffs a handful in his mouth. “Comfort food.”
We don’t speak or bring up the weird elephant in the room as we walk around the bazaar, checking out more stalls, trying food that Dex squints at and passes off to me if he doesn’t like it.
By the time we finish, there’s only a sliver of light in the sky, pink and orange hues minutes away from fading into the night, and as we’re walking through the park that leads to the bazaar’s entrance, Dex puts a hand on my arm and motions towards a tree a few feet away.
“Stand here,” he says, putting his hand on my chest and pressing me to the trunk of the tree.
He fiddles with his camera, not bothering to remove his hand until he has things set the way he wants them. When he does, it’s to grip my jaw in his strong fingers and tilt my head back. I don’t bother asking him what the game plan is—I just let him manhandle me into whatever position he wants.
That’s the thing about Dex: when he’s in photography mode, he is one hundred percent focused and professional. I’ve seen a couple of his behind-the-scenes shoots, but it’s something else to see him so intense in person.
When he has me where he wants me, his hand falling away leaves my skin feeling chilled, even as the incoming night air sits humid and thick around us. A part of me wants to move, to wreck his little vision so he has an excuse to put his hands on me again, but the rest of me is too awed watching him work.
He doesn’t complain about me following him with my eyes, but after at least a dozen shots he lowers the camera and steps up to me, his fingers pinching my chin as he angles my head around like he’s solving a puzzle.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.
“Like what?”
His gaze darts to my lips, and I reflectively swipe my tongue over them.
“Like you want me to keep touching you.” He drops his hand to my bare shoulder and ghosts it down my arm. “Like you want to do wicked things to me against this tree.”
He isn’t wrong. I want to trade places, want to kiss him senseless and rub his body raw right here in the middle of the damn park. All because he put his hands on me. In the most non-intimate way possible.
The measly inch he has on me? Puts me at the perfect angle to slip my hands behind his neck and drag him down for a kiss.
But that’s not in the cards for us. Dex is good at flirting to cause diversion; Spencer says so all the time. I can’t think anything of it. Can’t read into it.
“We should get back,” is what I say instead, ducking my head to break eye contact, and it’s like a bucket of ice water comes down over his head.
Dex’s hand freezes where it is on my wrist, and in one quick motion he snatches it away and steps back, looking up to the sky with his camera as if none of the last few minutes ever happened.
Which is for the best.
No need to confuse my heart, which has known from the moment it gave itself over to the broken boy in my bedroom ten years ago that it would never find a home with him.
Idon’tknowwhatthe hell possessed me to take those pictures of Valen. Seeing him talk with that guy, getting flustered around him, it stirred something ugly inside me. I wouldn’t call it jealousy because Valen can fuck whoever he wants; it doesn’t hurt my feelings.
But thinking about Valen and that guy wandering off together, finding a dark corner to do things I don’t want to think about, and leaving me in that crowd alone? It’s stupid. And then I thought about waking up in the middle of the night to find Valen gone, called away to some hookup and not there when I need him.
Which is ridiculous because I don’t need anyone, least of all Valen Olaño.
But when I gave him the out and he came back for me—came after me instead of getting his rocks off—I felt fucking soft. I felt like a teenager again with a shoulder to lean on, one that never wavered even when I pushed and shoved and fought him until I was all out of fight.
I know I didn’t imagine the heat in his eyes. I know it wasn’t a trick of my camera lens. It wasn’t like a raging fire but the embers under a pile of coals, pulsing, promising, and no one has looked at me as more than a thing they want to enjoy before. I’ve never let it get that far.
It’s downright suffocating.
So why, as the night is winding down, am I staring at his pictures on my computer screen? It’s not even just the ones at the tree, it’s the ones I snuck while he was showing me vendors and talking to the locals. Something about Valen screams at the photographer in me to look, to watch, to listen. To capture and experience.
