Page 79 of One Secret

'You mean David?' I ask, finally fitting the pieces together.

Cyrus tenses against me. His shoulders turn to granite under my hands.

'Whoever he is. He looked at you like... like more than a peer. He seemed sweet on you. You seemed... affectionate.'

I try to remember back to the last time we'd met at the hotel. First and foremost in my mind is how I'd thrown up within half an hour of my shift because a new waitress had taken the food the wrong way around the bar. The thick, buttery sweet scent of the dessert she'd been carrying had triggered a bout of nausea and David had caught me rushing for the bathroom. When I'd come out, he'd wanted to check that I was all right.

'David is a friend,' I explain. 'Only a friend.'

'Then...' Cyrus pauses, his brow coming down in a confused furrow. 'Who was at your apartment?'

'When?'

'When I came to pick you up. The blinds were moving after you came out. I figured he was—'

'Wait!' I hold up my hands as the pieces hit me in a rush of realization: what Cyrus saw and the conclusions he's jumped to. As anger spikes, I try to push him back, to put some space between us, but he doesn't budge an inch, still pinning me to the hotel's finely gilded wallpaper. 'Wait, you thought I was leaving my... my what—my boyfriend?—in my apartment and rushing off to meet my lover?' I choke out. I know that our meets have hardly followed the rules of normal courtship but I can't stop the rush of hot, shameful offense coursing through my bloodstream. 'Is that the kind of person you think I am?'

'I wouldn't think less of you for it,' Cyrus reassures from behind gritted teeth. 'We made no promises to each other.'

'Is that how you've been handling things?' The words are out before I can nip them in the bud. 'Leaving your girlfriend to come and spend a few sex-crazed hours with me—?'

'No!'

'Then why think it of me?'

'Do you even see yourself?!' Cyrus demands, suddenly as angry as I am. 'What guy is going to resist you? What guy wouldn't offer you what I can't?'

Even in my anger, Cyrus's choice of words strikes at something deep: "...what I can't." Not "what I won't".

'And you... don't want that?' I whisper in the dark. God, Cyrus had been so desperate to pull me close, he hadn't even turned on the light. 'Why? Why now?'

Cyrus looks pained.

'Do I need a reason?'

'When you pull a one-eighty that dramatically, yeah, you kinda do, sweetheart.'

Instead of replying, Cyrus swallows hard. There's just enough moonlight streaming in past the open curtains for me to see his Adam's apple dropping dramatically. Conflict, consternation, and contrition flash across his face. I can feel his body jacking up in temperature under the pressure of so simple a question.

'Cyrus...?' I gentle my voice and wrap my arms around him. I brush a hand over the short little hairs at the nape of his neck. 'Talk to me...?'

Cyrus can't look me in the eye. He keeps his gaze fixed on my collarbone, or his lids closed as I caress the back of his head.

'I like you,' he finally confesses.

For a minute, I think my fevered imagination has constructed the words in my head. Just plucked them from the ether of fantasy. Only when Cyrus's body tenses up harder in the following silence do I realize they're real.

'You what?' I breathe, hardly daring to let those three little words sink in.

'Nevermind.' Cyrus clears his throat and tries to pull back out of my arms. This time, it's me holding fast to him. 'It doesn't mat—'

'Cyrus.' I grab hold of him harder. 'Say it again.'

He freezes.

'What?'

With some heavy nudging and soft pulls, I draw him back against me. I find his mouth in the dark. I fill my kiss with warmth and wonder. His returning kiss has an edge of desperation. When we pull apart, I repeat myself against his mouth, my breath trapped hotly between our lips.

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