Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(69)

I spun my glass in a slow circle. “My therapist was right.”

“About what?”

“He said that we’re likely…bonded. Because of the shared trauma.”

Cory frowned. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. He says people who experience a crisis together sometimes become attached to one another. That explains why I slept so much better that night I visited you in the hospital, and why you kissed me—”

“I’m sorry, what?” Cory held up his hand. “I kissed you? I distinctly recall you leaning down to kiss me.”

“On the cheek,” I said. “You turned your head.”

“The hell I did,” he laughed. “You kissed me. On the lips. And not a short peck either.”

“Of course it couldn’t be short,” I said. “Not with you holding my…” I let my words trail, unwilling to speak of his gentle hand on my cheek, holding me there…Talking about it could lead us back further, to the little office, where we’d done a hell of a lot more than kiss.

“It doesn’t matter anyway who kissed whom,” I said quickly. “It’s just leftovers from the robbery. Nothing more.”

“Right,” Cory said as the waiter arrived with our food. “Nothing more.”





Chapter Twenty-Five


Cory



We drove back to Santa Monica. I tried not to take the turns too hard or lay on the gas whenever the traffic allowed me. The lunchtime conversation with Alex turned over in my mind. You saved my life, she told me, again and again. My hands gripping the wheel tightened. That’s why she was being so generous. The only reason.

No, I thought bitterly, her therapist gave her a tidy little reason too. But what did you expect?

I didn’t know what I’d expected, but what I hoped was something more than payback or some clinical diagnosis. If she thanks me one more time, I’m going to lose it.

I glanced over at her quickly, taking her in in bits and pieces. Her profile was stunning. A small nose, slightly upturned, with a smattering of freckle, soft chin, high cheekbones. And her eyes, like pieces of the sky when the sun had burned every cloud away.

It can’t be like this, I thought. It can’t be this hard. It’s only the first day, for chrissakes. I wondered if her therapist was right after all. How else to explain why I couldn’t get her out of my thoughts when I was apart from her, or how I couldn’t stop looking at her when we were together? Because we didn’t make sense. She wasn’t my type. She was too prissy, too fastidious, too elegant. But as they so often did, my thoughts went to the ambulance ride out of the bank. Even amid the pain, which was like a hand squeezing the air—and life—out of me, despite the blood and fear and chaos, it was then that something had shifted irrevocably in me as Alex held my hand and begged me not to leave her.

She was scared. And she’s a decent human being. Of course she didn’t want me to die.

I’d told myself those same excuses a hundred times and they fell flat now just as they had then. Because in the end, it didn’t matter what Alex was thinking on that harrowing hospital ride. It was my own feelings that clamored to be acknowledged. To be named.

But that train of thought was dangerous and only led to pain. The thing to do was throw myself to the task at hand. I pulled into the drive and set about unloading the truck.

We set the dresser, bedframe, and desk in the backyard, and three cans of paint—lavender, pale green and primer—in the guest room.

“I’ve got all the brushes, rollers, and stuff in the shed in the back,” Alex told me. “A tarp too, I think, from when I painted the living room. It was a hideous orange color when I first bought it. You should have seen it. Looked like a hash den from the seventies.”

Inside, we surveyed the spare room. Alex had already cleaned everything out, but the furniture. Together, we stowed the futon and desk in the large, mostly empty attic that had stairs off the kitchen. Then we laid out the tarp and set to painting.

It was easier to talk to her when there was work to keep my thoughts from veering off track. We chatted easily and lightly about all kinds of stuff with none of the tension that plagued my conversations with Georgia whenever we spent longer than five minutes together. Georgia always appeared to be forming her next response, a ready retort on her lips. Alex actually listened. She didn’t look at me spitefully, or with her mouth turned down in perpetual disapproval.

By dusk, the first coats of paint were drying. We’d done the three walls in lavender, one in pale green as an accent.

“Not bad,” Alex said, surveying our work. She arched a brow. “It’s almost as if you’ve done this before.’

“Once or twice,” I said. “You’re not half-bad yourself. Though I think you got more paint on your shirt than on the wall.”

Alex glanced down at her spattered clothes. “I throw myself into my work.”

“I noticed.”

“Dinner?” Alex said, heading to the kitchen. “I can’t cook to save my life—nor do I want to—but we can do pizza, or Szechuan…” Her phone rang and her smile slipped off her face like a paper mask when she read it. “It’s Drew. I’ll just…uh, hold on.” She headed toward her room. “Drew? Hi. Yes, I’m fine.”