Chapter 3 - Exit Velocity
631 Words
And then, all at once, my body remembered it was injured.
The adrenaline that had carried me this far dropped out from under me so fast it was almost graceful. The rain got louder. The lights at the far end of the carpet smeared. My left hand throbbed once, hugely, and then seemed to disappear from ownership altogether. My stomach turned. The pavement shifted half an inch to the left, then another.
I took a breath that did not finish.
*No, * I thought. *Not here. Not in front of him. *
I tried to straighten. My knees had already made a different decision.
The edge of the trash can came toward me at an angle that suggested I was the one moving, not it. I reached for balance with my good hand and found rain.
The rear door of the Spectre opened.
He crossed the distance between us in a few clean steps. Not hurried. Just immediate.
He was taller than I had guessed from the car, broader through the shoulders in a way the seat had hidden. His coat pulled tight across his chest when he reached for me. Up close, the wire-frame glasses made him look two things at once - colder at first glance, more exact at second - but underneath the lenses the line of his jaw, the dark sweep of his lashes, and the small fine scar at the corner of his upper lip were undeniably the geography of a real man, not an image.
He moved the way somebody moves when he has already decided what is going to happen and is only carrying out the steps.
"Enough."
That was all he said.
He caught me before the marble did.
One arm went under my shoulders. The other slid beneath my knees. The motion was so efficient it should have offended me. Instead, the first thing I noticed was absurdly simple:
he was warm.
The second was that he had not touched my injured hand.
The third was the shock of contact itself - rain-soaked wool against my cheek, a hard line of muscle beneath it, and the clean expensive scent of him: cedar, cold air, and something darker underneath that made my pulse stumble where pain had not left it any room to.
I made a small sound I would later decide had not been fear.
"Put me down," I said. Or meant to. The words came out without weight.
"No."
Not harsh. Not gentle. Final.
Rain gathered on his lashes and slid off without changing his expression. Up close, his eyes were not the color I had guessed from the back of the car. Darker. More watchful. The eyes of a man used to seeing the thing under the thing and not apologizing for it.
His grip shifted once, barely, when my knees gave again. Not a fumble. Not a flourish. Just a silent correction, as if his body had already accounted for mine.
He spoke very low, his voice angled down toward me, the rain seeming to soften around it.
"You are bleeding through your cuff. Your pupils are slow. Stubbornness is the only reason you're still on your feet."
It was the lowest voice I had ever heard a man use on me. Quiet. Roughened at the edges. Something in it found the place at the base of my skull I had been shaking from, and the shaking, against my will, slowed.
I wanted to tell him I had been standing on principle for most of my adult life. The words formed in the back of my throat and refused to leave it. They were too heavy.
Instead, the only thing that still seemed urgent in the wet narrowing world made it past my lips.
"You know about the wallet."
- Writer
