Page 31 of You Rock My World
She angles her face toward me, her small frown carrying a dozen silent questions of its own. I fear she might leave it at that, decide I’m not worth the effort.
Instead, she mutters, “Now I’m curious about what you’ll ask.”
I want to rock her boat, to know she has skin in the game, too. So, I destabilize her. “The first question is yours.”
Josie doesn’t speak right away. She fixates on a spot somewhere past me, her fingers absently tracing the rim of her water glass.
Then, as casually as if she were asking me what I thought of the weather, she says, “What’s your biggest regret?”
The question punches me straight in the solar plexus. A dozen possible answers rush through my mind—choices I’ve made, paths I’ve taken, things I’ve lost. But as I look at Josie, there’s only one true answer.
19
JOSIE
The silence stretches endlessly, each second folding into the next as I wait for his answer.
“Not getting divorced sooner,” Dorian replies, blue eyes on me.
The admission carves into the stillness between us. The words settle in my soul like an uninvited guest I’ve no idea how to greet. Keep quiet and pretend not to be home? Bar the door and send them away? Or throw it wide open and let them in?
A high, invisible pressure vibrates in the space separating us.
Heart thumping, I ask him, “Why?”
Dorian smirks, eyes crinkling. “You already used your question, Josie.”
“What?” I blink, taken aback. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t get a follow-up?”
My muscles tense, the need for answers coiling in my stomach painfully tight. But Dorian seems entirely unfazed by my protest. His smirk lingers as he calmly shrugs. “I’m only following the rules.”
I scowl. “You mean the made-up rules of your made-up game?”
He watches me squirm with infuriating ease, as if this is just another move in a match he already knows he’ll win.
“Rules are rules.”
“Go ahead, Rule Police, ask your question.” I gesture impatiently.
“Have you thought about me this past year?”
I cross my arms, straightening my posture, and meet his gaze, keeping my answer minimal. “I have.”
A flicker of satisfaction warms me, knowing the simplicity of my response will frustrate him right back. But instead of conceding, he appears more satisfied than before, his grin broadening, making me second-guess my advantage.
“Touché.”
It’s my turn again, and I don’t hesitate. “Why did you wish you’d gotten divorced sooner?” I drop the question and wait for an answer that could change everything.
This time, he doesn’t deflect. He pins me down with a stare as he tells me, “So I would’ve been unattached when I met you. So, I could’ve kissed you that night.”
The words detonate in my mind, scattering every carefully stacked barrier, dragging me back to the hours in the elevator in vivid detail. The press of the metal walls boxing us in, the flicker of the emergency light, the faint scent of leather and forest that was undeniably his.
But more intense than anything else are the memories of his silences, how he’d looked at me like he had a secret he couldn’t share. Only now do I realize that the suspension between us hadn’t been indecision; it had been restraint.
The memory isn’t soft; it’s a jagged pull, cutting me open with everything we didn’t do, didn’t say. I grasp the blanket, crushed by what-ifs. I don’t know what to do with this new knowledge, this revelation that’s repainting the edges of what I thought was possible. My heart is doing painful kung fu moves in my chest, torn between the thrill of his words and the fear of letting myself believe them.
I tap my foot on the ground. It’s the only movement I allow myself while I fight the tide of uncertainty so it won’t swallow me whole. “You wanted to kiss me?”
