Page 30 of Perfect Praise

I try to focus on my drawing until Locke shifts, his thigh pressing against mine. “You want the brown crayon?” he asks, lightly running it down my thigh.

“Thanks,” I say. My voice sounds too breathy, too affected.

When I take it out of his hand, he runs his palm up my thigh and ends with his thumb circling around my kneecap. He lifts his hand away from me only to come back again like he can’t help himself.

His fingers lightly tease their way down my calf until I widen my legs just a millimeter. He travels back up, one finger this time, tracing a path on my inner thigh.

“Why the fuck is your skin so soft?” he whispers.

I don’t have a chance to answer because Sarah bounds out the bathroom door, but how do you even answer a question like that?

Well, I exfoliate. Which I don’t.

Neither Locke nor I move. My mind is partly focused on the tingling sensation that still lingers where Locke touched me, partly focused on my coloring, and partly still trying to make out a picture in my head of Locke feeding a baby a bottle, taking her for walks in a stroller, when I ask out of nowhere, “You babysit?”

Sarah curls back up on the bed, and Locke looks up to make sure I’m speaking to him. “Yeah.”

My head goes back in my coloring page but only to hide the smile playing on my lips. Here’s Locke, sitting in Sarah’s room coloring a Disney prince, not wanting his photo taken to show off his good deeds to the world, and spending his weekends, when he’s not playing golf, babysitting his niece—all while he seems to like the feel of my skin under his fingers.

Locke’s still watching me. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head with a laugh. “You were right. I don’t think I know you.”

“On purpose,” he grumbles.

“I know him,” Sarah says, rolling her eyes like I’m a ridiculous adult. “Locke visits me every time he’s in San Diego when I have dialysis.”She drops her voice to a whisper. “He tells me secrets like he’s scared of snakes and gets nervous waiting in line for a roller coaster.”

“Sarah,” Locke says sternly. “They aren’t secrets if you tell people.”

She scoffs. “You said she was your friend, silly. Friends tell each other secrets. My friend Mallory hides one of her brother’s Legos that he needs under her bed and then laughs while he looks for it.”

I’m not feeling anything I’d describe as friendly wafting off Locke, so I nervously look at my phone like I’m willing Camille to call me with a fake emergency until I come up with my own excuse. “I need to finish taking pictures of all the other golfers.”

Locke stares again, and I’m so flustered I practically fall off the bed and trip over my feet as I make my way to the door. I gush over how nice it was to meet Sarah and how I will definitely come back the next time I’m in San Diego before I’m able to close the door behind me.

I hurry down to the end of the hallway and push open the door marked with a black stairwell sign. It’s a few degrees colder than the already freezing hospital, but I stop and lean against the cement wall.

If you’d asked me months ago who the biggest asshole was, I’d have said Locke without a doubt.

Now…?

He regularly visits an eight-year-old girl and tells her his secrets. He answers her questions, and stays out of the spotlight, and he’s an uncle. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s probably a good one too.

I bang my head lightly against the wall trying to erase the feel of his inky eyes on me, his thigh pressing against mine, the fresh air smell that wafts off him when I get too close.

The door flies open minutes later, scaring me enough that I jump and gasp audibly when it hits the wall beside me.

Locke looks just as startled to see me, but he recovers quicker. His eyes flicker down my legs and back up.

I’m not sure how much time has passed because I’m solely focused on how close he’s standing and how much he looks like he wants to eat me.

“Did I scare you?” he says intensely.

“Yes,” I confess.

I didn’t think it was possible but his eyes get darker, more intense than a second ago. He seems to watch my chest and my throat until he looks up. “Am I still scaring you?”

“Yes.” Maybe minutes stretch until I hear myself add barely above a whisper, “But in a good way.”

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