Page 16 of Redeem

“For what?” I asked, blinking. I was slowly regaining my senses, but in the next breath I realized how close I had been to losing myself and jumped back. I looked away from him, breathing deep, wondering what the hell I’d done, what I’d let him see.

After a moment, I turned to him again, knowing it was risky to look at him but my pride unwilling to allow me to look away. “You did a good job,” I said, wishing this was about his work, but knowing that it wasn’t.

“Not that,” he said, voice quiet but not deceptive, unwilling to let me labor under my fantasy that there hadn’t been something more. He went quiet for a moment, studying me, and then he spoke. “Before. I didn’t mean to pry.”

A flash of anger cleared the last of the desire that fogged my mind. Didn’t he realize that even saying that was prying? Why couldn’t he just take the damn compliment about his work and leave it at that? No, he’d taken me directly back to the porch, the conversation I wanted to forget, the beginnings of what could become a bond, something I wouldn’t dare risk.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it,” I said stiffly.

There was a flash of something that looked like displeasure in his eyes, then uncertainty. “I…”

He trailed off, and I narrowed my focus to somewhere around his chin, silently daring him to continue, to contradict me. His usually inscrutable expression told me that he wanted to argue, but I didn’t give him that chance.

“Don’t worry, Ciprian,” I said firmly. “It’s nothing.”

Now I just needed to convince myself.

Eight

Ciprian

It’s nothing.

I kept replaying those words in my head for the entire ride back to the hardware store.

She’d said them with such vehemence, but they were a lie, and she knew it, as did I.

Still, she had said them in a way that told me how important it was that she thought I believed them. How important it was that she believed them.

I wished I believed them too. This would be so much easier if I did. I didn’t have the right to ask for easy, certainly didn’t deserve it, but so far, my resolve was proving no match for Dana. She was so perplexing, intriguing, far more than I’d ever contemplated. And far more broken. I wanted to fix that, try to repair the holes I knew I’d helped create. Knew that doing so might not be possible, that trying would only make it worse.

An intractable enough situation, one that was only complicated by the other things Dana made me feel. I wanted her.

Not because of what I’d done and what I wanted to make up for. The simple fact was that I desired her, craved her, had been so close to kissing her, I was surprised I’d managed to stop myself. I might not have been able to if Dana had actually looked at me.

If she had actually met my eyes, I suspected I would have seen that same desire in her eyes, a fact that was humbling, shameful, and, as fucked up as it was, welcome.

“We’re here,” she said, and it was only when she spoke that I realized we had reached the hardware store.

I jumped off the truck and walked to the driver’s side again. Dana rolled down the window this time but she only looked at me with a sidelong glance.

“Tomorrow?” I asked.

She shook her head quickly and I felt a stab of disappointment that was so acute, it felt like physical harm, a feeling that moved closer to desperation when she started speaking.

“It’s Sunday. You should take a day off. Besides, I have to get my supplies for the week. Won’t have the time,” she said.

Her voice was strained, and I noticed the tension around her mouth, the way she seemed to be looking through me again, dismissing me. I couldn’t let that happen. Not yet.

“Monday?” I asked.

My own voice had lifted an octave and held a frantic note that I would have tried to hide if I’d had the patience to. She looked away and even shifted her body so that she was facing away from me. I could see that she was considering, and when she finally looked at me, my heart dropped. I knew what her answer would be.

“You should find something that pays better,” she said, though her voice wasn’t quite as strident as it had been just moments before. That gave me some hope that I hadn’t squandered my chance.

I stared at her for a moment, refused to look away until she met my eyes. When she finally did, I felt a stirring relief.

“Monday.”

---