Page 105 of Burning Daylight

Heat floods my skin, but I don’t drop his gaze. My heart thrums wildly in my chest, and my stomach is tight, but when he walks toward me with a slow and measured gait, I don’t move from my spot.

“So, whatdoyou write?” he asks.

I shift on my feet. “The world and all the people in it.”

Another step, and he’s close enough now that I can smell the citrus and sandalwood of his cologne. “And how would you writeme?”

Like he’s a light in the darkness, a northern star to my night.

“I think I’d write you as the sky,” I say. “Big and vast and full of empty air.”

He shakes his head like he’s disappointed. “Your prose could use some work.”

I bite my lip to keep from grinning.

Leaning in, he runs the back of his hand up my cheek, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. A shiver runs along the length of my spine.

“And what about me?” I reply.

He watches me, his jaw muscle tensing and his eyes burning. “I think I’d paint you into everything.”

Suddenly, the air feels too thin. Like his words have sucked the oxygen from the atmosphere, and I’m left reeling.

“Oh yeah?” I somehow manage. “So that sketchbook of yours…that’s all me?”

He lifts his hand, lets his palm trace a path from the side of my neck down to my collarbone, more of a suggestion than a touch.

“That sketchbook’s the east,” he whispers. “And you, Juliette, are the sun.”

My breath whooshes from my lungs.

He dips his head down until I can count every single lash, andGod, I need him to justkissme.

His phone rings, the sound jarring against my eardrums and grating against my nerves.

Snapping upright, he drops his hand and takes three large strides back, running his fingers through his hair like he’s trying to hold himself together. He tugs his phone from his pocket andfrowns at it, tapping it against his palm like he can’t decide if he wants to answer or stay here with me.

“Do you need to take that?” I ask, giving him the out if he wants it.

His brows furrow as he turns to me. “It’s my mom.”

My chest pulls thinking that he’d miss a call from her because of me. “I should go anyway.”

His mouth parts like he wants to protest, but instead he just nods. “Okay.”

I stand still, because my legs feel a little shaky from whateverthatjust was, and he doesn’t move, either.

He just stares at me like if he does it long enough, one of us will disappear. Or maybe he’s hoping our situations will change. That he’ll be someone else, or I will, and this thing that exists between us won’t feel so damn impossible.

Clearing my throat, I wrap my hand around the back of my neck.

He gives a small smile, and something hot and panicked starts to brew in my chest, so I turn and walk away.

The way it seems I’m always doing with him.

26

ROMAN