“Look, Vanny. I’ve got a card game I’ve got to get to. Love you, kiddo.”
“Love you—” the call clicked off as he hung up before she could even finish her sentence.
Geo leaned back against her bed and closed her eyes. Her throat hurt from tears that wouldn’t form.
Evening deepened as she fell into an uneasy sleep.
She woke up hours later to another buzz from the phone that still laid on her chest. Her eyes were scratchy, sleeping in her contacts always did that to her.
She quickly pulled them out, threw them in the trashcan and slid on her glasses. She read the text from Moreau, noting that it was just past midnight.
Up for cookies and questions?
She smiled, despite herself. Depends. Do I get to ask any questions?
His reply came back almost immediately. Nothing would delight me more.
They met in the hallway again and walked silently to the kitchen. She got out the cookies and put the tea on.
Moreau groaned as he sat on the barstool. “Can we go find someplace to sit that is a bit… softer?”
She shrugged a yes, poured the tea, tucked the cookie bag under one arm and followed him out to the TV room. It had a huge big screen and a sectional couch that was definitely more comfortable than barstools and counters.
She sat on one side and he sat on the other, the corner seat of the sectional between them. He stretched his splinted leg out on the coffee table.
“I heard the doctor was here today to check out your leg. Good news?”
“Yes, actually. He says two weeks and then I can take off the splint and do away with the crutches. With Leary’s help, of course.”
“Wow. That’s fast healing.”
He nodded. “Where were you today?”
“I had errands to do for the bunker. Grocery shopping and all that.”
“You weren’t at dinner either.”
She looked down at her phone in her hands and sort of twirled it between two fingers. When she looked up, he too was staring at her phone.
“You were with him?” he guessed, in a low and serious voice, nodding at the phone.
“Who?” Geo was confused as to who he could be talking about.
Moreau shoved at his hair. It wasn’t braided tonight and so it fell across his forehead and over one eye. He wore dark blue basketball shorts this time, but the same fancy black hoodie. His socks were black. He looked deeply sad. “The man who texts you so often.”
Oh. Her father was the only person who really texted her with regularity. Was it possible that Moreau had noticed? “I didn’t go see him tonight. I talked to him tonight. But I didn’t see him.”
Moreau picked at a loose thread on his basketball shorts. “I’d like to ask you my question now.”
Geo’s heart stuttered in her chest. Their cups of tea were cooling on the coffee table and the cookies sat untouched. It was painfully clear that the food and drink were merely props for the two of them to have this conversation.
Geo stretched out on the couch, attempting to look lazy and unconcerned. She hoped her nerves didn’t show on her face.
“Shoot.”
Moreau shifted, as if he were nervous, but he didn’t look nervous beyond that. His black eyes burned and the dim light from the lamp he’d clicked on when they sat down lit his face from the side, turning him into a matrix of golden shadows.
“Why did you only RSVP for one to Cedric’s wedding?”
Elena let out a bursting breath that wound up turning into a laugh. “That’s it? That’s the big bad question that’s been keeping you up at night? Jesus, Davy. You had me thinking you were going to ask me for a kidney or something.”
He didn’t laugh. He merely continued to swallow her whole into those eyes of hers. “Well?” he prompted. He very much seemed as if he were waiting for her response on tenterhooks.
“Because I’m not going with anyone. I’m going by myself. This isn’t rocket science, Moreau.”
He looked frustrated. Then he dragged his hand through his hair, made it stand up by an inch and looked even more frustrated. “How do you do this? Always answer my questions with the least helpful answers.”
“Maybe you’re not asking the right questions.”
He froze, narrowed his eyes at her, and then loosened all at once. He sighed and dropped his head back to the couch. “Maybe you’re right.”
The silence stretched and Geo reached for her tea. “Is it my turn to ask a question then?”
He lifted his head. “Sure.”
“What is it, exactly, that’s got you so upset? I mean, this whole thing is traumatic, for sure. But you’re upset about something else too. I just don’t know what it is.”
***
The truth was that he was frustrated because she’d once again evaded giving him any information about her personal life. But he knew that wasn’t what she was referring to. He knew that she, unlike the other members of the team, had sensed a greater issue at play here. Because she was perceptive. And more than anything, because she had cared enough to look, really look, Moreau gave her an answer he might not have given anyone else.
“I am frustrated, every day, because I can’t remember the crash.”
She nodded, as if she understood. “Yeah. That would be super disconcerting to me too.”
He nodded his head. “It’s more than that as well.” He wracked his brain for a way to explain. “I am never drunk. I never do drugs. Fame…” He trailed off and tugged at his ridiculous haircut. “Fame turns your body into a cage. You can never escape it. And I decided a long time ago that I would make my peace with the things I couldn’t control, and I’d control the things I could.”
Understanding lit her eyes. “So you don’t like to get drunk because it makes you feel out of control?”
He nodded curtly. “And in the worst case, it could make me black out. Forget my own actions. This is a horrifying thought to me, to not know what I’ve done or what has been done to me. But the accident, it did that anyways, without me drinking or doing drugs. It took away an entire day of my life, and then even more while I was recovering. I do not know what really happened. I do not remember getting into the car. I do not remember what I ate for lunch that day. I remember nothing for a full day afterward. I—”
He cut off and grabbed at his hair again.
“You were completely at the whim of those around you,” she supplied, truly hitting the nail on the head. “The doctors and nurses. The EMTs who pulled you out of the wreckage. Anything could have happened to you.”
“Exactly. I consider myself lucky that no one posted any pictures of me when I was passed out.”
She made a disgusted noise, like she could barely believe that someone would do that. Stoop that low. Unfortunately, Moreau had been famous for way too long to assume the best in people.
“Rook would have taken care of it if someone had. We would have had lawyers on their asses so fast—”
“Rook is not my handler, Savannah. He’s not my manager. He does not make those choices for me. He’s the head of my security.”
“And your friend.” There was a fire in her eyes that he barely understood.
“He’s my friend after I wore him down for three years. Friend is a recent development. Do you know how hard it is for me to actually know someone? To let them know me?”
“You have friends,” she argued, but he got the impression that it was more a force of habit than her actually feeling passionate about her argument.
“Yes,” he bobbed his head. “I will not belittle the friendships that I do have, but Savannah…” The wind went out of his sails and he fell back onto the couch, making the crutches wobble where he had them balanced. “I was alone and unconscious and there was no one there. No one who I don’t pay. No one.”
She eyed him for a long moment. He was being vulnerable and honest, and as such, he expected to see kindness and sympathy on her face. But this was Geo. So instead he saw careful thought, understanding, and a h
eavy dash of skepticism. She crossed her arms before she spoke again.
“Everybody pays everybody, Davy. In some way or another. Parents take care of their kids until the kids take care of their parents in return. Friends pay one another in kindnesses. Mentors invest their time in people they have hope for… It’s just the way the world works. Just because you happen to pay Rook for a service doesn’t automatically mean that he doesn’t care about you.”
“My issue is not with Rook.”
His dismissive tone seemed to snap the tension of her temper in two. Suddenly she was leaning forward on the couch, her elbows on her knees and lasers shooting from her eyes. “So, what, it’s with the rest of the team then? You think we don’t care about you? Jesus. Do you know how many times the entire Rook Security team has assembled in the middle of the night to make a game plan for a client? Do you know how many times I’ve seen Sequence in his pajamas, leaned over a computer, working as fast as he can? Do you know how much freaking work we had to do in order to clear everyone so that you could rehabilitate here? Do you know why we all wanted you to rehabilitate here? Fuck you, Davy.”
She was pointing an accusatory finger at him as if the last three words were actually the answer to every other question she’d just asked him.
“Because you weren’t here that night. The night we all found out about your accident. You didn’t hear what Atlas said.” She brought a shaking hand to the back of her own neck and clamped down, like some subconscious part of herself was trying to hold herself back. He prayed that she’d lose that battle. That she’d set these words free somehow, he desperately needed to hear it. Her words were painful and scraping, but they were also scrubbing him clean. “You weren’t there when Atlas said, ‘how do we get our boy back home’.”
Moreau dashed at the tears that had instantly sprung into his eyes at her words, the corresponding emotions collided with him a half a second later, on some sort of cosmic delay.
“Sure, you’re an entitled, aloof, argumentative, rich dick,” she informed him crisply, her chin coming up as she gazed imperiously down that gorgeous face of hers. “But you’re our boy. You’re ours, Moreau. And—” she cut off, rose up, and strode to the door, flinging it open and stepping out into the hallway. “And I protect what’s mine.”
The door slammed behind her.
***
The next day, her words echoed in his head over and over again.
Mine, she’d said.
Mine.
She’d referred to him as hers. She’d also, point-blank, told him that he was asking her the wrong questions. He could see now that that was true. He’d been dancing around what he’d really wanted to ask. And now, the right questions were burning a hole inside of him.
Who is the man who texts you?
What does he mean to you?
Will you let me kiss you?
Will you let me show you how good I could be to you?
The questions bubbled inside of him in an exhilarating, terrifying, effervescence. He felt as if he could run a race. Except, of course, for the crippled leg.
Leary came for physical therapy and it was the only thing that kept Moreau’s lid on. Leary led him through some arm and ab workouts that wouldn’t hurt his leg but would help him maintain his necessary muscle tone for recovery.
That exhausted Moreau enough that he could sleep part of the afternoon away. But dinner was torture. Geo’s color was high, her eyes were flashing, and she looked at everyone but him.
She was obviously still upset from their conversation last night and Moreau wasn’t even exactly sure why.
Was she angry at him? Embarrassed? Annoyed?
He added that to the list of questions he was going to ask her the literal second he could get her alone.
But he could barely stand to be ignored by her. When they were halfway through the meal, he could tolerate it no longer. He stretched his foot out under the table and found her shoe. He didn’t press up against her calf, or canoodle. No. He simply pressed his toes down on top of hers and was immediately rewarded by a sharp scowl across the table. He dared to press his toes down one more time and this time she gave him a quick little kick.
He hid his smile and finished dinner, feeling much better than he had at the beginning.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Come midnight, Geo paced in her room. She was irritated and confused.
“Fuck this,” she muttered to herself and, leaving her phone on the nightstand, quietly left her room and entered Moreau’s. She didn’t even knock.
He looked up in surprise from where he sat on the edge of his bed, his leg propped beside him. He held his phone in two hands and was mid-type when she stormed in. She would have bet a hundred bucks that he had been texting her.
“Savannah,” he said in surprise.
She closed the door behind her, crossed her arms and spoke in a very low voice, so as not to alert any of her colleagues that she was in Moreau’s room right now. It was something she could barely explain to herself, let alone to anyone else.
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
“What?” he set his phone aside. “Come sit.”
She ignored him. Tonight, he wore maroon basketball shorts and a gray undershirt. His shoulders were smooth and round and gorgeous, armpit hair peeked out from under his arms and for some reason the masculine sight made her mouth water. His black hoodie was tossed over the back of the desk chair that he’d motioned for her to sit in.
“I’m asking you what the hell is going on here. The texting. The looks. The questions. The footsie. The cookie eating.”
A smug smile crossed his lips and his eyes went half-lidded. “The cookie eating? I think I would remember eating your cookie.”
“Don’t get cute.” She strode over and sat down on the corner of his bed, more than an arm’s length away from him, her legs crossed in front of her. “Tell me what game you’re playing.”
“Game?” His eyes widened. “This is not a game to me.” He weighed his head to one side. “I admit it is very fun. But that does not make it a game.”
“Tell me,” she stubbornly repeated.
He tilted himself so that he was facing her more fully, surveying her with those black eyes. “First, let me ask you a few questions.”
“God, what is it with you and questions? Talking to you is like a never-ending game of truth or dare.”
“Shall we play a game of truth or dare right now? It might help us both to solve our mysteries much faster if the other is obligated to tell the truth.”
She laughed and shook her head at him. “Fine.
“Fine,” he agreed and scooted himself back on the bed so that he could lean against the headboard, his bad leg propped at a bit of an awkward angle. Geo frowned down at it, grabbed a pillow, and leaned forward to slide it under his leg.
He watched the whole thing with his eyebrows up around his hairline. “I can never tell how you are feeling, Savannah,” he said in a gravelly voice she’d never heard him use before. Even in a movie.
“I thought we were supposed to be asking each other questions.” She leaned her own back against the footboard and let her feet stretch out, their feet extending to one another’s knees, but not touching.
“Okay.” He pursed his lips. “How are you feeling about our conversation last night? I cannot tell. Angry? Embarrassed? What is it?”
“Yes.”
He rolled his eyes at her short, irritated answer and almost made her laugh. “Geo…”
“All right, fine. Yes. I was angry to hear how… lonely your life has been, Davy. I know what lonely feels like and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
His eyes were soft black velvet as he blinked at her. “And were you embarrassed?” His voice was as soft as his eyes.
“Embarrassed?” Her head came back in affronted confusion. “What would I have to be embarrassed about?”
His head rolled to one side as he watched her. “Because you told me that I wa
s yours. Mine, you said.”
Geo opened her mouth to reply and then clapped it closed. She had said that. But she hadn’t meant it like that. Had she? She hadn’t meant to say that he was hers and no one else could have him. Did she? She’d just meant that she counted him among the people she cared about. Right? “I didn’t mean it in, like, a Fifty Shades of Grey way, okay?”
A smile hit his eyes but not quite his mouth. “This is the second time you have mentioned romance novels to me. You’re starting to pique my curiosity about your reading habits.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m in a book club with Elena, May, Bex, Naomi, and Atlas. They make me read all sorts of crap.”
Moreau outright laughed at that. “Somehow, I’m not surprised that Atlas has wheedled his way into the group.”
“My turn to ask a question.”
He sobered and nodded. “All right.”
“What were you really trying to ask me with whole wedding RSVP thing?” She was a smart woman, she figured she understood. But she really didn’t want to assume and then get it wrong.
He cleared his throat, held her eyes for a moment, and then, to her surprise, looked away from her to watch his own hand scratch at something on the side of the headboard. He was nervous. Moreau Davy was nervous in front of her.
She reminded herself that he was an actor.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself before dragging a hand down his face. When he turned to look at her, his eyes were blazing. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
They stared at one another intensely before they both burst into laughter. With one simple question, they’d gone from being adults attempting to navigate their feelings to high-schoolers trying to ask each other to prom.
“Wow,” she muttered. Without answering, she looked up at him. “So. I guess what I thought was going on, is really going on.”
“What did you think was going on?”
She smirked at him. “You’re trying to smash.”
He lowered his brow tightly, his head cocked to one side. “Smash? What does that mean?”
“Google it.”
A frown still firmly on his face, he grabbed his phone and typed it in. He read the slang definition, his mouth falling open. A look of haughty disbelief augmented his features. He set his phone aside and stared at her. “No, Savannah. I am not trying to ‘tap that ass’.” He made air quotes around the phrase he obviously found so crass.
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