of thing, she rolled her eyes. But for some reason, the swallow inked into Nate’s skin seemed less horrifying/comical/pathetic and more…
Sexy.
Oh dear.
Thank God it was growing too dark for her to see those eyes of his. She remembered them anyway, ice blue with that dark ring around the iris—even though it had been years since he’d left, years since she’d been freed from the daily torture of his casual confidence and tightly leashed, oh-so-enticing anger.
How she’d envied him that anger, soaring wild and unrestrained while hers festered inside.
Now here he was, back like acid reflux, twice as sharp and thrice as unwanted. A thirty-year-old woman should not look at the man who’d once been her teenage crush and feel the horrifying stirrings of that sweaty-palmed, heart-pounding, baffling attraction. She totally did, though.
If God was still punishing her for staring at Emma Dowl’s arse in church, He was frankly being petty.
“If you know everything about me,” Nate said wryly, “we definitely need to catch up.”
She blinked, her usually rapid-fire mind suddenly stopped up with concrete. “We… do?”
His smile widened, and a dimple appeared in his right cheek. That dimple had caused enough heart palpitations before he was capable of growing facial hair; now that it peeked out from beneath stubble, Hannah might actually be in danger of feeling… something.
How absolutely heinous.
“Sure, we do,” he said. “You—” He broke off, his gaze focusing on something behind her. “Bethany! Stop feeding your brother plants! You’re gonna make him sick!” And then he calmly returned to the conversation. “You know everything about me, but I know nothing about you.”
Apparently, he wasn’t going to pull her up on the supreme creepiness of her earlier statement. Maybe God was on her side.
Then Nate said, “So what’ve you been up to since school?” and she realised that God had nothing to do with this day after all. It was quite clearly the devil’s work.
“Um… not much,” she lied. “Would you like a marshmallow?”
He blinked. “I don’t know. I feel guilty about my kids cleaning you out.”
Her bag did feel kind of light. Or rather, lighter. Marshmallows were never exactly heavy in the first place. “Don’t worry about that,” she said politely, while internally she chanted Please don’t eat my marshmallows. I was just being nice. They are the only thing that will help me recover from today’s numerous disasters and I do not want to share.
Maybe he was psychic, because he shook his head and said, “Nah. I could never take a lady’s mysterious and questionably packaged sweets.”
She blushed. “They’re, um… they’re totally safe, by the way.”
“That’s good to hear, since my kids just inhaled twenty of them.”
“Right!” Hannah’s laugh was a little too loud and brittle, even for her. She was surprised he didn’t wince. “Well, I hate to dash…” I hate to dash? Now she sounded like somebody’s grandma. Not for the first time, Hannah wondered what it was about human contact that turned her into a brisk, clipped, painfully awkward version of herself. She was either utterly embarrassing or unnecessarily harsh, and sometimes she couldn’t decide which was worse.
“Alright,” Nate said easily. “I’ll let you go, then.”
She tried not to look too grateful. She also tried not to sprint away like Usain Bolt. In fact, she tried so hard things went in the opposite direction. Hannah ended up walking painfully slowly, as if she were some stately matron making her exit.
Which gave him time to call after her, “You know, I didn’t think you’d still be here.”
Here in Ravenswood. Here in the town they’d grown up in, the town that had stifled them both—him obviously, and her secretly.
Sometimes everything about Hannah felt like a secret.
There was no judgement in his voice, but there didn’t need to be. Hannah judged herself all the time. Her mind supplied words he hadn’t said: I thought you were smarter than this. I’d thought you’d follow in my footsteps. I thought you were good enough to escape.
When she didn’t answer, he filled her silence. “I mean… I suppose I just assumed you’d leave.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, dredging up her long-suffering, plastic smile. “Like you, you mean?” He frowned, opened his mouth, closed it again, and her smile became harder to hold on to. “We’re not the same, Nate. Not even close.”
She knew that now. Even if, once upon a time, she’d dreamt otherwise.
“I’m sorry,” Ruth said carefully. “I think I misunderstood. It sounded like you said you quit your job.”