He wasn’t. The house was still.
Chapter Five
“Morning,” Devin said, without looking up from his laptop as I came into the kitchen.
He was still there. I was ridiculously pleased by that.
“Good morning.” I yawned and shuffled over to the coffeepot, happy to see he’d brewed a pot already and half was still available. Happy also that he hadn’t disappeared like last time. “Can I have some coffee?”
“No. You cannot have coffee.” He shook his head without looking at me. “Of course you can have coffee.”
Devin wasn’t wearing a shirt with his lounge pants, but that was the only indication it was before eight am. He didn’t look sleepy at all. He looked like he’d been tackling work for awhile, his eyes trained on the screen. “Don’t annoy me by asking my permission for everything while I’m here.”
Wow. He was starting the day off right where we’d left it. I got down a mug. “That’s easy for you to say. You may not want to be annoyed or bothered or interrupted but I’m the paid employee, remember? I can’t just walk around like this is my house.”
“Your subservience makes me uncomfortable.”
That pissed me off. “Then you shouldn’t pay people to do things for you. End of story.” I filled my mug and turned to him. “Because I can guarantee if I strolled around here back talking you and doing whatever the hell I pleased, you’d fire me. And since I need the money you pay, we’re stuck with me being polite.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “Is that what you’re being?”
Maybe not exactly, but hell if I would admit it. “Yes,” I said flatly.
“Fair enough.” He pointed his finger to the laptop in front of him. “Did you write this yourself?”
The blood drained from my face. “Write what?” But I knew exactly what he was talking about. Shit, shit, and shit. I had been using the house laptop to write some fictional short stories because it was way easier than on my iPad but I hadn’t expected him to be home so soon. I had left it just sitting open in a tab on the computer when I’d stomped off to bed the night before.
“This story, ‘Head Games,’ about a girl who lives entirely in her own mind.” His amber eyes studied me carefully. “I can’t believe something so dark and intelligent and intriguing could come out of such a sweet-looking girl.”
I didn’t say anything, just hid my mouth behind the coffee mug. I had never intended for anyone to read the short story. Certainly not him, of all people. It was like splitting open my skull and allowing him to see my deepest, most inner thoughts. The ones that were murky and unpleasant and disobedient. The ones that ached and craved and yearned.
“Or did someone else write it?” he asked.
“No,” I immediately protested. “I wrote it.” While I didn’t want him to read my secret work, my pride wouldn’t allow me to let someone else take the credit for it. “I just like to make up random stories, that’s all. When my grandmother was sleeping I couldn’t leave the house, but it got boring. So I started writing. It’s not a big deal.”
Except it was. To me. But he could see right through my protests anyway.
“It’s very well written. It’s a complex story, unique.”
His compliment made me feel warm, but at the same time, I felt like I couldn’t accept it. “It’s just okay. It wasn’t what I wanted originally. It’s… flat.” Like my chest. Just no thrust to it.
“It’s not flat. It’s damn good, Tiff.”
Normally I hated being called Tiff. It sounded childish. Like a temper tantrum. But from Devin it felt like affection. “Thanks.” I was wearing skinny jeans, thick socks, and a sweatshirt. When I turned, embarrassed, intending to set my coffee down and get a bagel out of the pantry, I slipped on the hardwood floors.
My arms flailed for a second but Devin’s hand shot out and gripped me hard, steadying me. He was just trying to be helpful, but the hot contact of his skin on mine sent a jolt through me and I yanked myself away, wincing.
It was instinctive, for multiple reasons. It was because I had been dragged, yanked, pulled, more times in childhood than I could count. A hard grip had always promised pain would follow and I had learned to flee, to hide. To anticipate and brace myself against anger.
It was also because his hand was big and firm and I was undeniably attracted to him. I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings.
But the response was awkward, over the top, and he noticed.
And called me out on it.
“What was that?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I hedged.
“No. Don’t do that.” He slowly shook his head. “You said you’d be honest, remember? So tell me why you just jerked away from me when I was trying to keep you from falling on your ass.”
“It was Pavlovian,” I said, voice low, hoarse. I met his eye, defiant. I wasn’t going to be ashamed of what other people had done to me. They were in the wrong, plain and simple. I hadn’t deserved to be treated the way I had been and I wasn’t going to be embarrassed.
“Why?” he demanded. “Because you were anticipating being hit?”
I nodded. “I had people get… rough with me as a kid. I was instinctively bracing myself when you grabbed me.” Hearing the words out loud was enough to have me raising my chin even further in stubborn pride. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” I warned.
“Well, that’s not very fair,” he complained. “You demand I don’t feel sorry for you, but if I callously disregard the fact that you jump like a kicked puppy, then what kind of heartless prick does that make me?” He crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Not great options you’ve left me, Tiff, so I think that I will have to defy you and tell you I feel empathy for what you’ve been through. I don’t pity you, but I have compassion.”
He was right. But I couldn’t help it. Being looked at with pity was almost as bad as disgust, another response I’d gotten frequently as a kid. What is she? One foster mother had asked with blatant disdain. Is she black? Mexican? I had been thirteen and I had been overcome with hatred for her, for everyone who looked down on me, for stupid racism that had no basis in anything but ignorance. Hatred that I was made to feel inferior, less of a human being, because I was one of a handful of biracial people in the area.