The Bride Test(76)

He got up, distracting their celebrity speaker midsentence, and his mom aimed a disapproving scowl at him. Esme ignored everyone and tugged on his hand until he followed her out to the pagoda’s koi pond.

“Sit, Kh?i, you look bad.” She directed him to a stone bench that overlooked the water. He sat, and she brushed the hair from his clammy forehead with cool, soft fingers. “You need water.”

When she tried to pull away, he wrapped his arms around her waist and held her close. “Don’t go.”

“Okay,” she said, and she urged him to rest his cheek against her chest. Her fingers smoothed through his hair and along his scruffy jaw.

He breathed her in. She smelled slightly different than she used to, like she’d changed laundry detergents, but he found the comforting feminine scent underneath it all. Her scent. The scent of woman and clean skin and Esme.

The ash of incense slowly faded from his senses, and he let everything slip away but her. The sick feeling receded. He could breathe again. People began to walk by, a few at first, but gradually more. Still, he didn’t let her go. He needed her touch, her smell, the steady beating of her heart, her.

“M?,” his mom said, making Esme stiffen against him. “Come help me with—oh, never mind. I’ll have Quan help me.” His mom’s footsteps quickly retreated.

Esme ran her fingers through his hair before asking, “We have eggrolls here. Want some?”

“Not hungry.” It would take something catastrophic to lure him away from her right now. He was like a wounded beast who’d found a respite from the pain of his injuries. “Unless you want them?”

She laughed a little. “No, I ate too many already.” She brushed her fingers across his scratchy cheek.

He hadn’t thought he’d ever have this again, and he let his eyelids fall shut as he soaked up her touch. She was better than sunlight and fresh air.

Time passed, he didn’t know how much, and his mom came back and said, “You two should go. Kh?i, take M? home for me, ha?”

“C?, I can help clean up.” Esme pulled away from him, and he bit back a protest. He wanted to grab her arms and wrap her back around him like a scarf. “There are a lot of containers and—”

“No, no, no, it’s all taken care of. People are leaving now. Go home,” his mom said, waving dismissively at them. “You’ll drive her, ha, Kh?i?”

Esme’s mouth opened like she wanted to speak, and he quickly said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“Good, good.” His mom hurried away.

He got up from the bench and took a deep breath. His head pulsed, but he hadn’t felt this good in days. “Let’s go, then.”

“Are you better? We can wait,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m better.” A bit achy and bruised inside, but improved. Pretty much the way he felt when he’d been sick for days and his fever finally broke. Except he’d never spiked a fever.

As they walked to his car, he was intensely conscious of the respectful distance between them. She kept her fingers laced together, and the set of her shoulders was tense as she focused on the path ahead. Just two weeks ago, they would have held hands. Just two weeks ago, she’d been in love with him.

Was two weeks enough time to fall out of love with someone?

It made him a greedy bastard, but he wanted her love. He wanted to be her “one,” the recipient of her smiles, the reason for her smiles, her drug. She was his.

After all of this, it was clear he didn’t have the flu. He’d been going through withdrawal, and it was much worse than he’d originally imagined. He had to find a way to make her stay.

They piled into his car, and he started the ignition and rested his fingers on the wheel. “Where do you live now?”

She looked down at her tightly clasped hands. “The month-to-month place by the restaurant.”

His gut twisted, and an unpleasant sensation spilled over his skin. “That is not a very good part of town.”

“It’s good enough for me.”

No, it wasn’t.

Gritting his teeth, he left the pagoda in San Jose and headed to her place via the 880N. He sped through flat territory with drab office buildings and storage lots and pulled up to a small gray apartment complex tucked behind a beat-up strip mall. On the way from his car to her apartment, his shoes crunched over shattered glass from a broken beer bottle, and they passed a stray shopping cart lying on its side.

He hit the lock button on his key fob just in case and scanned the area for bored kids who might be interested in keying his car or slashing his tires. None, thankfully. His house wasn’t great, but at least he didn’t have to worry about vandalism.

When she stopped in front of a door on the ground floor of the building, his displeasure grew. Not safe. It would be so easy for someone to break in. She had a lot of character, but that wasn’t enough to protect her against someone bigger, stronger, and possibly armed. His hands started sweating at the idea of some asshole breaking through one of her windows and coming inside to—

“Do you want to come in?” she asked, peering over her shoulder at him from just inside her open doorway. “You don’t look good.”

At his silent nod, she opened the door wide and let him in. It was a plain studio apartment with brown carpet, a sleeping bag on the floor with a pile of textbooks next to it, a mostly empty closet, and a teeny linoleum kitchen.