Thelightsweretoo bright.
I dropped my chin to my neck to hide the burn of the fluorescents from my eyes. There were rows of them, stacked one right after another, leading all the way back on a ceiling that went on and on.
James had just driven around until we found a department store in the area. He didn’t want to use the GPS on our phones and have it questioned later what we needed from a department store at 3 a.m. in an area neither of us knew.
It was smart.
He was smart and I was… mostly numb.Left out in the world too long until the coldest hearts alive ate mine all up.
I didn’t say anything in the car ride over, and I didn’t say anything when we parked. James buckled me into my seat and unbuckled me just the same when we got there. He didn’t ask if I needed help.
He just knew I did.
James stood next to me in the store, his presence like a radiator. He buzzed with the hum of energy—with purpose—and as usual, too goddamn warm. His heat licked my hand that was still wrapped in his as he pulled us over to a rack of sunglasses and hats.
Truthfully, his hand was the only thing I felt at all.
It was stabilizing when everything else around me had been thrown off-kilter.
I felt like I was walking in a world turned sideways, one wrong step away from falling off the edge, and James’ hand around mine was the only thing tethering me to the ground. He was most likely only holding onto me so I wouldn’t run, but I didn’t care about the why.
I just didn’t want him to let go.
Yet he did, though only for a second. Not long enough for me to even protest before the hands I needed were on my shoulders instead. Holding me. Cementing me down so I didn’t tumble away and lose my fucking mind in the middle of a department store.
I ran my stare up his face and watched him in silence, taking him in as he pushed my hair over my shoulders. Leaving one hand around my arm, he yanked a brown hat off of the rack of many and fit it over my head.
His focus wasn’t on me, but on the task as he pulled the brim down to hide my face. I tilted my head back to keep my view of him, and he didn’t correct me. His fingers messed with my hair around my face, curving back over my ears to brush my hair behind both.
His face was hard-set in blind pursuit. He had a mission and a one-track mind to complete it.
Though, that one-track mind caught on a distracting snag as he skirted his eyes to touch mine.
And I didn’t let him go.
I held on, searching back and forth through his eyes for an explanation. An answer for what he was, because normal wasn’t it.
Normal would have pointed the blame finger at me right away. Normal wouldn’t have believed me at all. I was a bratty young woman, and Derek was a federal agent. I was alive, and he was dead.
He was clearly the victim, and I was clearly the criminal to blame as normal would have said.
James Reyes was not normal.
I devoured him shamelessly, not bothering to try and hide the fact that I was completely and foolishly enamored by him and whatever type of man he was. He was a beautiful creature that I wanted to dissect down to his bones and fiery-hot blood. I wanted to peel him apart and get lost in his veins, riding the current of him until it swallowed me up.
He believed me without evidence. He believed me without witnesses. He believed me without much of my side of the story.
He just believed me at my word.
Now he was sacrificing himself, his morals, maybe even his job to protect me, and I was…
Lost.
And still mostly numb.
I was numb to everything but my fascination with James.
Nothing about him made sense, but everything about him felt. I was having trouble understanding it, how I felt him completely, wholly, consumingly. Everywhere. Inside and out. As if he’d exchanged the blood in my veins for his, pulled the air out of my lungs and filled it with his own, lit his own match of flames in my soul, and now that’s what burned beneath my skin.