Chapter Seven - What She Notices
635 Words
Chapter Seven - What She Notices
A week passed.
Nora settled into the penthouse the way water settles into a new container. Carefully, filling the spaces available to her, not pushing against the edges.
She worked at her desk in the mornings. She used the library in the afternoons, which she had claimed quietly and without announcement, and nobody told her she could not. She had dinner with Elena most evenings because Lucian was rarely home before nine and when he was he ate in his office or not at all.
She noticed things about him the way she noticed things about everything. Quietly and without making it obvious.
He was always cold. Not in temperature exactly but there was something about the air around him that never quite warmed, like standing near a window in winter even when the heating was on. She had thought it was the penthouse at first. But she had tested it. The kitchen was warm. The library was warm. The cold moved with him.
He did not eat the way a person ate. He sat at the table when required and he went through the motions but she had never once seen him finish a meal or seem to need one.
His eyes changed in low light. She had caught it twice now, that brief amber shift when he was not paying attention to controlling it. She filed it away and said nothing.
She told herself she was simply observant. That this was what she did, noticed details. It had nothing to do with the fact that she found herself listening for the elevator every evening.
Marcus came by on Wednesday and found her in the library.
"You have made yourself at home," he said, looking at the books she had spread across the low table.
"Someone had to," she said. "Does he ever use this room?"
"Not in a long time."
"Why not?"
Marcus considered this. "I think some rooms hold memories that are easier to avoid." He said it lightly but she heard the weight underneath it.
"How long have you known him?" she asked.
"Long enough," Marcus said, which was the same answer Elena always gave and told her exactly as much.
She looked at him steadily. "Everyone in his life speaks in non-answers. Has anyone ever told you that is not a personality trait, it is just evasion?"
Marcus laughed. It was a genuine laugh and it surprised her a little. "He said you were direct."
"He talked about me?"
"He mentioned it." Marcus picked up one of her books, looked at the cover and set it back down. "He notices more than he shows, Nora. Keep that in mind."
She thought about that long after Marcus left. She was still thinking about it at nine thirty that night when she heard the elevator open.
She was in the living room with a sketchbook on her knee and she did not look up when he walked past. But she was aware of him the way you are aware of a change in pressure. The air shifted. The cold moved through the room briefly and then settled.
He stopped.
She looked up.
He was looking at her with an expression she could not fully read, something that was not quite surprise and not quite anything else she had a name for. Like he had not expected her to still be awake.
"Working late," she said.
"So am I," he said. And then he walked on to his wing and the hallway was quiet again.
She looked back down at her sketchbook. She had been drawing without paying attention and on the page in front of her was a sharp angular jaw and dark eyes that she had not meant to put there.
She closed the book.
- Writer
