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Instead, she sat there beside him in a daze as their driver navigated the evening traffic and delivered them to the front door of her apartment building in what felt to her like record time.
Though it could have taken a lifetime. She didn’t think she’d be able to tell the difference.
Once inside her building, Blue was all grim, focused business as he hurried her across the lobby and into the stairwell.
And still, Everly didn’t think to stop and have it out with him. Not out in the open.
She didn’t even pause. She ran up the stairs the way she’d been doing every day, waiting at the top of each flight until Blue—always there in front of her—nodded to let her know it was safe to proceed. She did the same at the heavy metal door that led to her hallway, and waited an extra beat for her breathing to calm down. She could have pretended that it was the stairs that had gotten to her, but she knew better.
Walking up the stairs often left her winded—it was true—because she wasn’t a career warrior like Blue. But tonight she’d been winded going into the five-flight climb.
And that kiss replayed in her head, over and over, incase she was tempted to tell herself she didn’t know why.
She could still taste him, she thought, as he jerked his head to indicate that the hallway was clear. She could still feel the way his palm had fit there on her jaw, as if he’d left a mark.
But all she did was follow him down the hallway. Then she stood there mutely as he fished out the keys he’d made copies of one day while she’d been dutifully pretending she was the same Everly Campbell she’d always been, and let them into the apartment.
My apartment,she reminded herself. Because she’d managed to forget that lately.
The way she was forgetting too many things, it seemed.
She stood inside the door, the way he’d taught her. She didn’t watch him as he roamed from room to room, checking closets and looking under beds the way he did every time they returned home. She stayed where she was and tried to control her breathing before Blue commented on it, the way he liked to do.
But her heart was still pounding. Her pulse was still elevated and wild.
And there was a fire in her, burning almost too bright to bear, one she had no idea how to put out.
Blue appeared in her bedroom door, always his final stop. He propped himself there with one hand on the doorjamb and his gaze darker than usual when it met hers across the living room.
“Good job,” he said.
Everly hardly registered the words. It was his tone that got to her, because it was so...neutral.
Aggressively, bizarrely neutral.
“Thank you,” she replied, almost by rote. She straightened, there in the foyer. “Which job do you mean?”
“It’s good to know you can think on your feet,” Blue said in that same tone. It wasn’t a slap, she cautioned herself. It justfeltlike a slap after they’d shared a kiss like that. As anything would. “You went with it in that lobby, and it worked.”
That comment, on the other hand, felt like he’d used his fist. Her heart slammed against her ribs, hard, and she was surprised it didn’t knock her to the ground.
“Oh?” She sounded distant. Far away to her own ears, but Blue didn’t seem to notice. “In what way did it work?”
“There’s no way a bargain-basement ’roidhead like that looks at me and doesn’t know exactly who and what I am. He probably clocked my military training before he walked through the glass doors.”
Blue moved from her bedroom door to the space beside the couch where he kept his things, stacked so neatly it felt like he was making a statement, and squatted down beside his bag.
Busy busy busy,Everly thought. Not nicely.
Because it was almost as if he was trying to keep himself as busy as possible rather than look at her again.
“And that works, because I’d prefer he go back and tell whoever he works for that you got yourself a dangerous man as a lover, not a bodyguard.”
“A lover.” Everly echoed him as if she’d never heard that word before.
She was still standing a foot or so inside the front door. Frozen in place. Because she thought that if sheallowed herself to move, she knew just enough self-defense that she might imagine she could hurl herself at him and hurt him.
He could incapacitate her in a few seconds and without much effort, she knew. Oh, she knew. But maybe it would be worth it if she drew some blood first.