Agent of Chaos (The X-Files: Origins #1)(32)

As he eased her onto the bed, she put her hand against his chest, holding him back. “I know why you’re doing this.”

Mulder stared into her big blue eyes. “No, you don’t.”

Because I’m too scared to tell you how I feel.

She was still out of breath, and her chest rose and fell faster than normal. “Kissing me won’t make you forget.”

“I don’t want to forget. I want to find the psycho who took my sister.”

“But the person who’s taking these kids might not be that person.” She searched his face. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Not until I find him.”

“Fox—”

“If there’s even the slightest chance the same thing happened to Samantha, I have to know,” he said.

Phoebe gave him the same sad look he remembered from the day he moved. “Promise me you won’t get obsessed with this. That you’ll be careful.”

Mulder moved closer. “I promise,” he said with his mouth against hers. Then he kissed her until their lips were swollen and they were both exhausted.

Phoebe nuzzled his neck and he tightened his arm around her waist, listening to her breath against his ear. Holding her made him feel normal, as if he were just another guy who loved playing basketball and hanging out with his friends. A guy who was still trying to figure out the big stuff—like where he should go to college in the fall and how to ask the girl he’d kissed five minutes ago out on a real date.

*

Hours later, when the first blue-black signs of dawn began to bleed into the sky, Mulder was still awake. The urge to kiss Phoebe and feel her lips against his was replaced by a different urge. It compelled him to ease out of bed without disturbing her and cross the room to open the closet door.

He took a marker off the shelf and picked up the yardstick he had dragged from Martha’s Vineyard with him to DC. It was the yardstick his mom had used to record Samantha’s height every year on his sister’s birthday. Mulder flipped it over to the back, where he was keeping a record of his own.

He wrote a number above the one he had recorded yesterday.





1,952


The number of days since the last time he’d seen his sister.





CHAPTER 15

Lauinger Library, Georgetown University

April 2, 10:40 A.M.



Mulder woke to the sound of the shower. He rolled over and stared at the wrinkled sheets next to him. He could still see the faint outline of the spot where Phoebe had slept last night.

The fact that she was already out of bed and in the shower saved him from the awkward moment when she would inevitably tell him why something like this couldn’t happen again.

He tugged on a pair of jeans, threw on a plaid button-down, and rolled up the sleeves. He padded down the hallway, getting his ass kicked by his thoughts, so he didn’t notice the bathroom door open. Phoebe walked out, and he almost plowed into her.

Mulder caught her by the shoulders. “Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.” Phoebe was wearing a flowered peasant top with jeans and her wooden Dr. Scholl’s sandals, and he let his fingers linger on her bare skin.

“That’s a first,” Phoebe teased. She had a deeper voice than most girls, and it sounded even sexier in the morning. Her damp blond hair framed her face, and her expression made him want to kiss her again. She tilted her head to the side, a sign she was weighing her options.

Did that make him an option?

“I wanted—” he started to say, just as she said, “About last night—”

So much for dodging an awkward moment.

“What were you going to say?” she asked, her expression hopeful.

“‘My tongue gets tied when I try to speak,’” he quoted with a sheepish smile. “You go ahead.”

Suddenly, Phoebe seemed nervous. She parted her hair down the middle, gathered one section, and pulled it through a hairband to make a pigtail. “I know the situation with Sarah Lowe is stirring up all sorts of memories and emotions, and I’m here for you.” She finished twisting one side and moved on to the other one, her fingers moving faster now. “But I can’t be your security blanket whenever you get lonely.”

“That’s not how I think of you,” he blurted out. And it wasn’t.

A security blanket?

Suddenly, it hit him.

He only had the guts to act on his feelings for her when life got intense. The rest of the time he was too paralyzed to make a move, or admit the way he felt. Why wouldn’t she think that he was only interested when he got lonely?

“I’m a jerk, Phoebe.” Mulder ran his hands over his face. “That’s not the way I feel about you, at all.”

She was watching him. “Then how do you feel?”

Tell her the truth.

Tell her that you think she’s the smartest person you’ve ever met. The only person who knows more about Star Trek and rocket science than you. Who knows that you never sleep in your bed, unless she’s in it. Tell her every time she smiles, you wish that you were her boyfriend.

Mulder rehearsed the words in his head, but he couldn’t get them out.

The stakes were too high with Phoebe. He couldn’t risk losing his best friend if she didn’t feel the same way, even though he was pretty sure she did. And what if she had real feelings for him, too? He couldn’t hurt her, the way he seemed to hurt everyone else he cared about.