Page 46 of If Not for My Baby
“Oh, nowhere,” I utter, brushing the question aside. I’ll tell Indy how icky he was being later when we’re alone.
Indy jumps in to ask Rhett a question about his next album, and while they chat, Halloran angles his body a bit to face me. When our eyes meet my heart skips over a beat.
“Having fun?” he asks quietly. His jovial mood has shifted.
“Loads,” I lie.
He works his jaw. “With Grayson?”
“No,” I admit. “Grayson’s kind of a creep.”
If he looked tense before, Halloran’s eyes are poison black now. “What happened?”
That expression—I am wholly out of air. “Nothing,” I wheeze.
“Clem.” He sighs, physically relaxing his features as if trying to talk down a lunatic with a gun. “I’m not—”
“Clem?” Indy asks, butting in. “Are we calling you that now?”
“Sure,” I say, grateful for the interruption.
Halloran says evenly, “We aren’t.”
Indy appraises us both with skepticism. Rhett stifles a laugh.
Bruce tries to steer the conversation back. “Tom, I was just telling Indy—”
But Halloran cuts him off. “Can ye give us five?”
Bruce and Bill nod eagerly—of course, andwhatever yousay, boss—and I look to Rhett, who eyes Halloran beside me pointedly. Only then do I realize Halloran is talking aboutus.As inme.He waits, a foot or so away from our little cluster. I give Indy the universalone secsign and follow after him.
When we’ve walked around the perimeter of the house to a slightly quieter spot beside a thatched garden toolshed and some trash bins, he sighs. Not an exhausted one, but more of a steadying exhale. “Grayson do somethin’ to ya?”
“Not at all,” I say. “All I meant was that Grayson’s kind of a jerk. I promise, you do not have to worry about me.”
“I do, though.” Halloran’s face bears such an expression of torment my chest starts to hurt. “Worry about you.”
Now I’m confused. “Because of Grayson?”
“Because I think of you nonstop. You’re legging it through my mind daily, Clem. You were long before I kissed you.”
“What?” I think I physically stumble backward. “You’re not interested in me.”
“I’m not?” A slight smile twists at the corner of his mouth. “You should tell my dreams that.”
My heart pounds in time with the seismic shift that’s occurring. “But you—your songs…they’re about badass women. Formidable, gossamer-draped, apocalyptic witch-goddesses slinking toward the edge of the world.”
“I see. And that’s not you?”
“I buy vintage Christmas coasters at the flea market! I trim my dog’s bangs with baby nail scissors. I—” I’m rambling. “I’m a one-kiss-on-a-bus girl. Not dream-worthy. Notyour hyper-intelligent, mythic-love kind of dreams, anyway. I don’t even have dreams of my own.”
He looks at me like he’s debating whatever he wants to say next. Fighting some creature of self-preservation. He decides on, “Just because you don’t let yourself dream doesn’t mean you don’t have any.” When he speaks again, his voice has dropped an octave, and I know the creature’s lost. “And you’re as much a formidable, gossamer-draped, apocalyptic witch-goddess as any I’ve known. Your ferocious kindness, those devastating eyes…” He trails off with an exhale. “The songs will write themselves.”
I am frozen in a kind of fear I’ve only seen in movies. This is it: the beginning of something that is more than a crush. For him. For me. The crossroads where I can follow momentary pleasure to long-term pain or turn around and nip all of it in the bud.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
He pauses, then asks weakly, “Don’t what?”
