by Cole McCade
“…right.” The girl bit down hard on her lip, eyeing Celeste uncertainly, before eyeing her chest, where one button sat askew. “We’ll be waiting in auditorium B. You might want to fix your shirt.”
The girl walked away a little too quickly. Celeste looked down and groaned, smacking her palm to her forehead. “Jesus.”
Ion reached for her. “Should I—”
“You should go.” She batted his hands away with an exasperated sound, then quickly unbuttoned and re-buttoned her shirt. “I swear, you are a walking disaster.”
He didn’t know how he kept from grinning with pure smug pleasure. Stepping back, he snapped off a quick salute. “Dinner. Don’t forget to text me the list.”
“Okay, okay.” She flapped her hands. “Shoo. Go. Scoot. Before you find some other way to utterly humiliate me.”
He laughed and turned to walk down the hall. “See you tonight.”
“Sure,” she said, then called after him, “Don’t forget what I told you about non-equilibrium gas models!”
“I’ve got it, Cel.”
“But if Violet doesn’t account for—”
“Cel.”
In two quick strides, he pulled her into his arms and silenced her with a lingering kiss. Just one more taste before he had to worry about pacing and structure and fielding Drake’s emails. One more drop of that fire to fill him, until the words became an inferno and she was the fuel that made him burn. He teased her mouth until he could taste its swollen fullness, until she parted to let him in. A single deeper caress, a promise that when they were alone, he wouldn’t have to let go—before he drew away, brushing his fingers under her chin.
“I’ve got it,” he repeated softly.
“R-right,” she murmured. “You’ve got it. Um. Dinner, then.”
He smiled and brushed his thumb over the crimson flush in her cheek, then reluctantly dragged his hand away from her smooth, warm skin. “Tonight, Celeste,” he said, then turned and forced himself to leave.
Walking away felt like he was walking from one woman’s arms into another’s. From his fascination with Celeste to his obsession with Violet’s memory. But with Celeste’s help, he’d finish the book. Soon. The last book in the Violet Sparks series. Then, maybe, he’d finally be able to let go. It was time to move on with his life. Celeste had shown him that.
He only wondered if, after she left Paris at the end of the week, she’d give him a chance to show her so much more.
CHAPTER TEN
AS SHE TIED ON ION’S oversized apron—wrapping the strings twice around her waist and knotting them in front—Celeste stared at the grocery bags strewn across the black marble kitchen island. “I think…you may have gone overboard.”
He leaned against the countertop with a mild look. “You didn’t specify quantities. Better to have too much than too little, right?”
She gestured at what had to be over a hundred dollars’ worth of food. Chicken breasts, four different types of cheddar by the pound… “How many people did you think we were feeding?”
“Two very hungry ones who haven’t eaten anything but milk, cheese, and ice cream for two days.”
His gaze dipped to the sheer, pale blue knit sweater she’d thrown atop a camisole, lingering until she had to look away, heat simmering in her cheeks. He let out a rumbling laugh; she scowled. Jerk liked making her blush.
“Two people,” he clarified, “who’ve been working up a strenuous appetite.”
“Point conceded.” She eyed him as she started unpacking the bags and sorting parcels into stacks. He lingered without a word, until she practically squirmed under the intensity of his scrutiny. “Are you going to watch me cook?”
“I could go write,” he said innocently.
“Please. You’ll make me drop something and set your kitchen on fire.”
“Pretty sure that’ll happen anyway.”
“Ion!” She stuck her tongue out with a little sniff, then bent to rummage in his cabinets until she found a decent-sized pan. “I’m not that bad.”
“I’m amazed the TSA even let you on the plane without checking for explosives.”
“…now you sound like my sister.”
With a snort, she unearthed a large pan and fished around for foil, clumsy in an unfamiliar kitchen but rapidly learning her way. But when she tried to set the oven to preheat, she ended up just staring at it. It didn’t have any dials or switches. Just a touch-sensitive control panel that looked like a NASA systems board designed in hell. By a French speaker. She eyed it, then tentatively poked a button that could be the heat or could be a rocket ignition switch. The stove let out an ear-splitting shriek. She jumped back, squeaking.
“Having problems there, Cel?”
“Cut me some slack. I usually do this over a Bunsen burner.”
“How do you cook over a Bunsen burner?”
“With a detox kit close at hand.” Cel crowed triumphantly when she found the right button and turned the oven on. “You don’t even want to know about the time I swapped parmesan sauce with zinc oxide solution.”
“Are you planning to poison me?”
She eyed him. “Are you planning to keep watching?”
“…going.” He raised both hands in surrender and, chuckling, retreated across the apartment to his desk.
She watched him for a few fond moments; he settled in his desk chair in a lazy slouch and flipped the laptop lid up, drumming his knuckles against his thigh in that way he always had when thinking about something. It was so strange to see this man with so many mannerisms of the boy she’d known, yet matured into an entirely different person. The Ion she’d watched from afar as a girl had been a fantasy, the concoction of a childish and lonely heart.
The man he’d grown into was better. More accessible. From the terrible sense of dry humor to his restless sleeplessness to that faraway look in his eyes when he was turning over an idea, all the little things she’d noticed in just a few short days…they made him more perfect than any idealized fiction.
And she didn’t know how she’d walk away from this, come Sunday.
He glanced up, one hand tangled in his hair. “You planning to keep watching?” he mocked gently.
“Right. Okay.” With a laugh, Celeste turned to start the food.
At her hotel, she’d Googled a recipe for cheese-crusted, breaded baked garlic chicken with potatoes au gratin. Plenty of dairy to override the lingering chemical aftertaste, with a little starch for absorption. She peeked to make sure Ion wasn’t watching, then tugged the printout from her back pocket and smoothed it against the counter. She’d never made anything like this before—using a stove, no less—and doubted her experiments in Bunsen burner gourmet qualified her to wing it without a recipe. She might really end up poisoning him.
But before long, she managed to whip everything together and slot it into the oven. She put the mountains of extra food away, washed her hands, then circled the kitchen island and drifted over to Ion’s desk. She watched him a moment, gauging his mood; his brows were set in a hard, thoughtful line, but he didn’t have that lost look that said she’d screw something up if she interrupted. His hands rested quiescent on the keyboard.
She slipped behind his chair and leaned against the back, draping her arms down his chest and resting her chin to his shoulder. “How’s it going?”
“Slowly. My stomach is distracting me.” He tilted his head back to look at her—then reached back to snare her and tumble her into his lap, making her gasp. “You’re distracting me.”
“And you’re manhandling me again.” She slid her arms around his neck. “I don’t mean to distract you.”
“Impossible not to.” He kissed her shoulder, lingering idly, the casual affection warming her. “I’m not used to having someone in my kitchen, making themselves at home.”
“No? No girlfriends?”
“Nothing serious. I don’t do well with other people in my space. Or my life.”
“Lucky for you I’m leaving
soon.”
He stiffened, entire body rigid, eyes turning strange and remote. “Yeah. Lucky me.”
Celeste searched his face, but couldn’t read him. Couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. She’d never had his ability to peel people open with a glance, get to the heart of them, figure out what made them tick. But it wasn’t hard to figure out he wasn’t happy right now, and from the possessive way his hands settled on her waist, she’d almost think he wasn’t particularly overjoyed by the idea of her leaving.
But I have to, she thought. Even if the real you is better than any daydream…the real me isn’t this woman I get to be with you. This is still just a fantasy. One I can only have for so long.
You’d hate me if you knew the lie of it.
She swallowed against a sudden thickness in her throat, and touched her fingertips to his lips before sliding from his lap. “I should check the food.”
“Sure,” he said, as his hands fell away from her.
He said nothing else, but his gaze followed her as she returned to the kitchen and slid on a pair of oven mitts. She could blame the oven for the rush of heat over her face, when she pulled the door open and peeked at the slowly browning food. Just the oven, not the way he watched her—or how comfortable it was to move around his kitchen this way, as if she belonged in his home and his life.
As she tugged the oven mitts off, Ion asked, “Do you teach your workshops all day?”
“I’m usually done by two. People get antsy when they have to sit still too long. Though I might have a few afternoon interviews if I’m lucky. Why?”
“For the rest of the week, why don’t I pick you up when you’re done?” He rose and leaned against the island again, watching her with that quiet intensity that exposed her so very deeply. “I’ll show you my Paris. What made me love it, not just the tourist attractions. It’s only Tuesday. That gives us four days of sightseeing before you leave.”
She paused, blinking at him, while her heart shuddered with the aftershocks of the earthquakes he kept rolling through her. “Okay,” she said, a smile tugging at her lips. “Okay. I like the sound of that.”
* * *
The chicken came out better than she’d expected, after her first time cooking outside the lab in ten years. The crisply breaded garlic crust sealed a layer of melted cheese atop tender chicken; she could barely taste the chicken past the cheese and garlic—but she could barely taste the chemical residue, either. Maybe it was fading, but she’d like to think her cooking helped drown it out.
Over dinner she explained types of gas giants, the science behind color classification of stars, the concept of planetary cooling, why meteors burned up in the atmosphere, and why Star Wars got asteroids completely wrong when the scale of the average asteroid field could put dozens or even hundreds of miles between each chunk of rock. When she caught herself rambling, barely pausing for a bite of food, she hesitated—but he prompted her with warm questions, interest glittering in his eyes. She tried to hold back anyway, but forgot herself and launched off again, until he laughed uncontrollably while she ranted about Firefly being one of the only TV shows to get it right when it came to space, sound, and fire.
She huffed, dropping her fork to her empty plate. “It’s not funny. You know how they say ‘in space, no one can hear you scream?’ Well, they can’t hear your stupid sound effects, either.”
“Ah, Cel.” Still chuckling, Ion gathered their plates. “If the world had half the passion for anything that you do for astrophysics, we might just transcend ourselves as a species.”
She flushed, watching him carry the dishes to the sink. “Most people think it’s silly.”
“I think it’s incredible.” He rounded the counter and reached down to cradle her face in his rough hands, coaxing her to her feet and kissing her lightly. “There’s something pure about you, Cel. About your love. If you ever loved a man the way you love your work, I doubt he’d be able to handle it.”
She stilled as the crack he’d chiseled in her heart widened a little more. But I did love someone that way. When I was too young to know any better. She offered a watery smile. “I can name half a dozen guys who probably wish I’d tried.”
His thumbs stroked her cheeks, warm and slow. “I doubt your trail of broken hearts is only six men long.”
“Seven. Most guys I’ve ever dated.”
“Doesn’t mean there weren’t more in love with you who never had the courage to say so. I wouldn’t be surprised if your fire frightened them. If they were afraid of competing and falling short.”
And you’re not? But she couldn’t say it. Even if he tangled her up in knots…this was temporary. She swallowed back the words clotting her throat and wound her arms around his neck. “Shut up and kiss me, you silver-tongued idiot.”
She barely had a moment to breathe before he pulled her into his arms. And with every kiss, every touch, the tight pain knitting under her ribs eased a little more…until she could think of nothing but him.
And as he tumbled her into bed, as she tangled her fingers in his hair and cried out his name, she wondered how anyone for the rest of her life could ever compare to this.
* * *
They lay in the moon-silvered dark, with their legs twined and their bodies sprawled an intimate tangle of sated warmth. Their hair spilled and intermingled across the pillows in a wash of black until Celeste couldn’t tell where she ended and he began, and as they rested brow to brow she inhaled his sighing breath, the tip of her nose brushing his. Blue shadows fell over him like water, and she couldn’t look away from the sleepy relaxation in his eyes, the contentment rising off him like smoke from a flame.
He brushed her hair back, fingertips tracing her brow. “Tell me something about you,” he murmured.
“Like what?”
“Anything.” He smiled, warm and boyish, so unguarded in this moment that it stopped her heart. “You’re a painting, Cel, and I’m filling in your colors.”
She bit her lip, searching for an answer. Such an open-ended question, but her mind went blank. “I wore footie pajamas until I was eighteen?” she offered.
He laughed, eyes crinkling. “Seriously?”
“They’re comfortable. There’s a reason that Snuggie atrocity sells.”
“Cute.” He kissed her nose. “Pink with fuzzy bunnies?”
“Purple, thank you.”
“Purple. I’ll remember that,” he said—and she thought he might mean it, in this quiet moment. “What else?”
She hesitated. She’d never had anyone want to just…know her this way, asking her to define herself in a series of moments that meant something to her. “I still have a keychain my father gave me when I was ten,” she said, smiling to herself, recalling that day in the planetarium, fidgeting with her keychain and telling her father she loved the wild Gypsy boy who’d grown into the wild Gypsy man who held her like he’d never let her go. “Two stars on silver chains. He’d say ‘one star for you and one for me, starlet—to always guide us home to each other.’ I guess it works, because I always come home to him. It’s my good luck charm, though I know luck isn’t real. It’s just butterfly effect ripples and the human need to see patterns and coincidences. But I can’t help but reach for it when something big’s about to happen. Oh—” She grinned. “And sometimes I wish vampires were real.”
He nipped her throat, hard enough for a warm burn of pleasurable pain to bloom against her skin. Her breath caught. “So you’re into that, hm?” he growled.
“Stop that.” She shivered and wove her fingers into his hair with a playful tug. “No, it’s just…vampires are immortal, right? And sometimes I want to live forever. It makes me sad to think I won’t be here to know what happens next. What amazing new things we’ll discover, and the worlds we’ll see.”
“Vlad Celeste, vampire astrophysicist.”
“You are such a dork.”
“Only around you.” His lips trailed from the lingering heat of the bite mark to her jaw; she leaned
into him as each touch skimmed soft as a sigh over her skin until he found her mouth. He kissed her with a tenderness that melted through her, before resting against her, watching her until those deep blue eyes filled the night. “More.”
It took nearly a minute before she could speak. Did she really need to answer when he saw right through her, laying bare her secrets—except the one that would make him turn away? “This feels like an interview,” she deflected. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Try your favorite memory.”
She sifted through her memories. Twenty-eight years of joy and pain, of struggle and achievement, of moments that meant so much—but when she fell on one that lit her heart with that sweet ache of remembrance, she smiled.
“When I was a little girl, before my mother died, she’d take me and my sister shopping every weekend.” It hurt that she couldn’t tell him the whole truth, so he could share in the familiar warmth of recalling a place they’d both called home for a while. “This department store had a huge delicatessen in the basement, with every kind of chocolate you could imagine. My favorites, though, were these chocolate bon-bons with white sprinkles. I called them ‘chokkit nights’ when I was barely old enough to talk, because they looked like stars in a chocolate sky.”
She laughed at herself, shaking her head. She’d been such an odd child. “After a while we never called them anything else. I’d tell my mother ‘want chokkit nights, Mama’ and she’d pick me up and carry me on her shoulders, until I got too tall…and she started to get sick. Breast cancer.” She trailed off, remembering the yellow tone to her mother’s skin, the way the tendons stood out in her hands, the smells of the hospital and medication and illness. She let her gaze drop, focusing on the dip above his upper lip. “When she was in chemo, she’d ask for them. Dad didn’t know what she meant. I took him to the store and showed him. When we brought them back and she was too sick to eat them, he broke down crying.” Her eyes blurred, but she forced a smile. “That was the day I realized my father was human, and not this god who showed me the stars.”