The Hollow Page 0,22

flies.

"Who knew washing dishes could be so sexy?"

She laughed, glanced over her shoulder at Fox. "Don't think that's going to convince me to repeat the favor."

He stood where he was, a badly wrinkled dishcloth in his hand. "What?"

"Washing dishes is only sexy when you're not the one with your hands in the soapy water."

He came forward, put a hand on her arm. His eyes locked on hers. "I didn't say that out loud."

"I heard you."

"Apparently, but I was thinking, not talking. I was distracted," he continued when she took a step away from him, "by the way you looked, the way the light hit your hair, the line of your back, the curve of your arms. I was distracted," he repeated. "And open. What were you, Layla? Don't think, don't analyze. Just tell me what you were feeling when you 'heard' me."

"Relaxed. I was watching the little boy on the swing in the yard. I was relaxed."

"Now you're not." He picked up a plate, began to dry it. "So we'll wait until you are."

"You can do that, with me? Hear what I'm thinking?"

"Emotions come easier than words. But I wouldn't, unless you let me."

"You can do it with anyone."

He looked into her eyes. "But I wouldn't."

"Because you're the kind of man who puts a dollar in a jar, even if no one's around to hear you swear."

"If I give my word, I keep my word."

She washed another dish. The charm of sheets flapping in the wind, of a little boy and his big dog dissolved. "Did you always control it? Resist the temptation?"

"No. I was ten when I started tapping in. During the first Seven, it was scary, and I could barely keep a handle on it. But it helped. When it was over, that first time, I figured it would be gone."

"It wasn't."

"No. It was very cool to be ten and be able to sense what people were thinking, or feeling. It was big, and not just in the wow, I've got a superpower kind of thing. It was big because maybe I wanted to ace a history test, and the smartest kid in history was right there in the next row. Why not reach in, get the answers?"

Since he was drying dishes, he decided to take the extra step and actually put them away. She'd be calmer if they continued with the chore, if all hands were busy. "After a few times, a few aces, I started feeling guilty about it. And weird because I might take a peek into a random teacher's head to see what they were planning to toss at us. And I'd get stuff I shouldn't have known about. Problems at home, that kind of thing. I was raised to respect privacy, and I was invading it right and left. So I stopped." He smiled a little. "Mostly."

"It helps that you're not perfect."

"It took time to figure out how to deal. Sometimes if I wasn't paying enough attention, things would slip through-sometimes if I was paying too much attention, ditto. And sometimes it was deliberate. There were a couple of events with this asshole who liked to razz me. And... when I got a little older, there was the girl thing. Take a quick sweep through and maybe I'd see if I had a shot at getting her shirt off."

"Did it work?"

He only smiled, and slid a plate into its cabinet. "Then a couple weeks before we turned seventeen, things started happening again. I knew-we knew-it wasn't finished after all. It came home to me that what I had wasn't something to play around with. I stopped."

"Mostly?"

"Almost entirely. It's there, Layla, it's part of us. I can't control the fact that I might get a sense from someone. I can control pushing in, pulling out more."

"That's what I have to learn."

"And you may have to learn to push. If it comes down to someone's privacy or their life, or the lives of others, you have to push in."

"But how do you know when-when, if, who?"

"We'll work on it."

"I'm not relaxed around you, most of the time."

"I've noticed. Why is that?"

She turned away to get more dishes, then slid a bowl into the sink. The little boy had gone inside, she noted. In to eat dinner. His dog curled on the porch by the back door and slept off playtime.

"Because I'm aware you can, or could, sense what I think or feel. Or I worry that you can, so it makes me nervous. But you