Page 82 of The Number of Love
“No it isn’t! We’ll just ... erase it. Cancel it out with an opposite. Rebalance the equation.” She waved a hand, as if the past minutes were a chalkboard she could erase with the gesture.
And now he was smiling, while she gestured like an idiot. “I don’t want to cancel it out.”
Her hands were shaking again as she reached for the door latch. “Well, I do.”
“What are you afraid of, Margot?”
Change. Being alone. Losing him. It would hurt all the worse if she let herself give in to this. She shook her head and pulled open the door. “I’m just your friend. Your sister’s friend.”
“I love you.”
He said it so easily. Calmly. Confidently.
Her panic was in proportion—an exponential one. “No. You don’t. You can’t.Idon’t. Just...” But she didn’t know what she meant for him to do. She just knew she couldn’t do this. Because she’d lost her father, she’d lost her home, she’d lost her country, she’d lost her mother. She couldn’t lose anything else, but it always happened. Inevitably. And she didn’t have positives enough to offset all those negatives anymore. She’d run out, run dry, run empty.Run away.
“Margot!”
She nearly tripped on the threshold, but running was her only option. So she’d take it.
25
Margot!” Drake picked up the handbag she’d dropped as she’d groped for the doorknob and ran after her. He wasn’t as fast as he used to be. His side objected, but not loudly enough to stop him. He couldn’t let her leave like that. She could try to disappear from his life.
Worse, she could fall headlong into the fear he’d seen flashing through her dark eyes like lightning. Let herself believe the only way to outpace it was to deny even possessing what it threatened to take away.
He reached the door to the building just as it was clicking shut from her exit and swept out onto the sidewalk in time to see her plow into someone on the corner.
It didn’t slow her down for long.
But it slowed Drake. Because it wasn’t justsomeone. It was someone in a grey overcoat, with longish dark hair, a trim beard, and an inquisitive slant to his brows. Someone who, upon spottinghim, took off at a run on the street perpendicular to this one.
Drake sped to the corner, glancing first straight ahead toward Margot’s retreating back and then down the intersecting street, where the man’s grey coat flapped behind him.
If he’d still doubted that the man had something to do with Jaeger, that made it certain. If he were just an innocent neighbor, hewouldn’t run from him like that. And why did he now? He must have spotted Drake that day he’d come down and known he would recognize him. He must have.
He could follow now. He wasn’t at his fastest, but the man didn’t seem to be moving at that impressive a clip either. He might be able to catch up.
And then what? Tackle him? Smack him with Margot’s handbag? The man must know he was injured. And a well-placed brolly to the side could undo all the weeks of healing.
Moreover, he didn’t matter. Not compared to Margot.
The debate had only taken a second. And he didn’t regret his decision for a moment as he ran after her. He only hoped that no Good Samaritan would think he was chasing her for cruel reasons and would decide to intervene. Though he could always claim he’d seen her drop her handbag and was just trying to return it.
He didn’t call out again—the less attention the better—and she still didn’t look over her shoulder. Maybe she thought he wouldn’t follow. Or didn’treallymind that he did. Either way, her pace slowed as she made the turn that would take her home, and he closed the distance between them.
Which was a good thing, or he might have lost her when she made the unexpected detour into the little park they’d walked in after Mass for the last few Sundays.
“Margot.” He dared to call to her again only once he’d entered the park, too, and followed the winding brick path to where the table and chairs were set up by the bench. She was there, of course, collapsed onto one of the hard chairs by the table with the Go board. Gasping for breath. Or crying. Or perhaps both. “Mi alma?”
She shook her head, shoulders heaving. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your soul.”
She knew the phrase? Always surprising him, this one. He eased down beside her chair and slid her handbag into her hands. “Why does it scare you so?”
Her hair was a ruin under her hat, those carefully measured waves flying every which way—and looking all the more charmingfor their disarray. He gave in to the urge to smooth them down and was rewarded by her meeting his gaze.
“I’m not scared.”
Part of him wanted to smirk, to call her on the obvious lie—point out, perhaps, that she didn’t deliver it with her usual mathematical precision. But what would that achieve? Instead he took a moment to think. To try to see down to the depths of her heart through those depthless eyes. “Sometimes running away does speak to courage instead of fear. To wisdom. Sometimes running away is necessary. Though I certainly hope not in this case.”
