Chapter 12
784 Words
The night air hit me the moment I stepped outside.
Cool and dark after the warmth of the dance, the music fading behind me as the door swung shut. The parking lot stretched out ahead, mostly empty at this hour, lit by the low glow of the campus lights.
I stopped.
Then I saw him at the far edge of it.
Leaning against a black car, arms folded, already looking at me when I came through the door.
He didn't move.
I swallowed hard and then started walking.
The night air was cool against my bare arms and the open back of the dress, my heels quiet on the asphalt, the parking lot still around us.
His eyes stayed on me the whole way across it. Dark. Steady. Watching me come to him. He didn't move an inch to meet me and I crossed every inch of it until I was standing in front of him and had to look up.
His eyes stayed on mine for one moment, something in his expression that I couldn’t read.
Then he moved and opened the passenger door.
I stared at it.
Then got in.
~0~
The city slid past the window, but I couldn’t pay attention to any of it.
I watched his hand on the gear stick.
Watched him shift it.
Felt something tighten in me.
My pulse hadn't slowed since I'd crossed that parking lot toward him and I wasn't trying to slow it. I pressed my knees together and kept my eyes on the glass and let the feeling sit in me exactly where it was.
The lights blurred past. My whole body hummed, every nerve alive.
We didn't speak.
We didn't need to.
~0~
We pulled into a parking lot.
The engine cut.
I looked up at the tall building through the windshield. It was dark brick, classic, well maintained.
He got out.
I stayed. The city was outside the glass, the sound of it muffled and distant, my heart moving in a way that I felt everywhere.
My door opened.
He was there. One hand on the door, his eyes on me. Something in the way he looked at me made something pull even more inside me.
I got out.
The night air met me again and I fell into step beside him. The doorman held the door.
“Mr. Blackwell,” he greeted with a nod and we stepped inside.
The lobby was cool and still with black and white marble floors that reflected the lighting back up at us. There was a man behind a desk who looked up and greeted Mr. Blackwell once more before looking back down.
I followed him across the lobby into the elevator, watched him take out a key card, press it to the panel, press 12. The last button.
The doors closed.
And then it was just us.
I fixed my eyes on the numbers and felt him beside me. The warmth of him. That specific quality of his presence that I had never once in all these weeks been able to be neutral about, no matter how many times I'd tried.
I didn’t look at him.
The numbers climbed and I watched them climb, something in me tightening more with each floor. Soon the elevator doors opened directly onto double doors. Dark wood, solid.
He walked to it.
I followed him, watched him press the key card to a panel beside it. Then pushed open the door.
I stepped through, eyes widening.
The city was right there.
Floor to ceiling windows, the whole of it laid out below, and it stopped me for just one second... the lights, the distance, the scale of it, the way it made everything feel both very large and very small at the same time. Then I turned back to him.
He was already looking at me.
I held my breath.
Silence enveloped the space.
Then he reached up and loosened his tie.
He slowly pulled it free, his eyes never leaving mine.
I stepped back.
Then took another.
He watched me.
Then began moving toward me. I kept backing up until the glass met me, cool and solid, and there was nowhere left to go.
He stopped in front of me, his eyes on my face.
There was one second of complete stillness.
Then his hand slid to my neck, warm, tilting my head back.
"Do you know how you look in that dress?" His voice was low.
Heat flooded me. His name came out of me breathless and his eyes darkened even more.
Then his mouth captured mine.
And I kissed him back, my hands gripping his shirt, his hand sliding up under my dress.
- Writer
