Page 38 of The Whisper Place
“Hi.” I kept my voice as low as hers. “Are we sneaking around behind Earl’s back?”
“That would imply he’s a party to this, so obviously no.” Her hands skimmed up my arms and looped around my neck. “But I haven’t found the right time to talk to him yet, and I’m still reading a few books on the subject.”
“How To Tell Your Ex-Father-In-Law You’re Dating Again For Dummies.”
Her eyes narrowed and her energy crackled dangerously ondummies. I bit down on a smile. Sometimes, her reactions were too easy.
“I need him to be comfortable with this. You’re one of his best friends now and he’s lost so much in the last few years. I don’t want him to feel like he’s losing either one of us. Or access to smuggled steaks.”
Everything I’d sensed from Earl told me he was ninety percent fine with me in his daughter-in-law’s life, but I wanted to do this right. It felt more important than anything I’d done. I drew back. “Do you want me to be there when you talk to him? Or ask for some weird patriarchal permission on the sly?”
She smiled again. “Thank you, but no. I want to talk to him alone. I will. Soon.”
Before she could start logging mental calendar appointments, I moved back in, feeling the spike in her heart rate and the answering one in my own chest. The freedom to do that, to be this close to her, was like a drug soaring through my veins, only better than any drug I was used to. “Then I guess we should make the most of this bathroom break.”
The other night on Eve’s lawn had felt like something out of time, slow and deliberate, like we were amazed to find each other in the same dream and doing everything we could to avoid waking up. This was different. This kiss was instant heat—fast and open and hard, both of us twisting closer and looking for more. She pulled me down by the hair, scraping her nails over my scalp. I grazed her temple, her ear, her throat, trying to learn as much ofher as quickly as possible. Someone groaned. It might have been me. The need vibrating through her and echoing inside me turned the world into a vacuum where only we existed. And neither of us wanted to come up for air.
She lifted a leg, running it over my hip, and under the white noise filling my brain I heard the idea in her head.
“Like this?” Lifting her, I set her on the edge of the counter and stepped between her legs, bracketing her hips until a start of surprise shocked me into the reality of what I’d just done.
Everything went cold.
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
I backed up, putting space between us, trying to redraw nonexistent lines between my head and hers as panic filled the edges. She hadn’t asked me to put her on the counter. She hadn’t made any physical move to indicate she wanted to be up there. Shethoughtit, and I’d taken that as some kind of permission. Like any errant thought in her head was mine to consume.
She perched on the countertop, confusion mixing with the haze of need clouding her energy. Her hair looked like she just got out of bed, but her eyes were as piercing as always, cataloging everything. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“Which part? Because the evidence so far suggests otherwise.” She tilted her head and reached a hand out, but I couldn’t take it.
“You know which part. The part where you thought something and I acted on it, because I have no boundaries.” I paced, trying not to look at her, because looking at her made me need to touch her again. “You won’t get to have any boundaries either. I can spy on everything in your head whether or not either of us wants me to.”
“Kendrick.”
“You’re thinking I’m an idiot right now, that we were past all this. But you also like how I’m running my hands through my hair and what it does to my arms.” I dropped them to my sides and turned to face her. “Do you have any idea how tuned to you I am? How invasive this is?
“It’s like the dreams, the one-way glass where I see people who have no idea I’m there. I’m a voyeur to their misery, drowning in their panic and fear, and what good does it do? I wake up and they’re still alone.”
The need in her cooled. Her mind started firing again, analyzing everything I said. The arm appreciation was already history. Her fingers drummed on the counter.
“Do you think any of this is new information to me?”
“You were surprised.” I stared at the fridge and the picture of me on it. Maybe there was a reason I was facing away from the camera, a sign that I didn’t belong with the smiling faces. “I felt it. You can’t lie to me.”
“And I told you I could handle whatever you are, as long as you’re honest about it.”
I remembered. Outside a barn, on the verge of a panic attack and a massive, unhinged heist. A painfully white world. Her eyes on mine.
“Come over here.”
It was impossible not to do what she asked. If she told me to scale a mountain, I would’ve died trying. I moved back in front of her and even the proximity made my skin hum, like electrons were jumping back and forth between us. She started to say something, but a crash in the bathroom caught her attention.
“He’s fine. The toilet paper bar fell off the wall again. We should move that so it’s not getting caught by the wheelchair.”
She laughed. “And you think you only invade privacy? If you hadn’t been here, I would’ve checked on him.” She waited until my gaze snagged on hers. “You’ve given Earl his dignity back. You see him.”
