being that way, but I know not everybody is into… that.” Me. And my sometimes bad attitude. And my bluntness. And a bunch of other aspects of my personality that I wasn’t going to apologize for.
The lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes grew deeper as those eyes moved across my face, and it was right then that big, warm fingers covered in calluses covered mine. And Jonah’s voice was a low, husky thing I didn’t know what to do with. “You didn’t force me to do anything, love.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he shook his head. “And you are all those things, they’re just mixed in with all those other traits I like even more.”
His fingertips slid from my knuckles to my fingertips and back, and his smile grew a little wider, a little more brilliant, as he said, “You’ve got the sweetest face, even when you’re throwing out every insult in the English language.” Jonah’s eyes bounced from one of mine to the other, and he asked quietly, “Do you know why I could talk to you when we met?”
I didn’t.
“You were sitting on a bench at the architectural museum while we waited for the tour organizer to come around to sign everyone in.”
I faintly remembered waiting around and sitting on a bench next to these two teenage boys who were trying to stay as far away from their parents as possible.
“An elderly couple arrived—do you remember them? The Canadians celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary?” he asked but didn’t wait for me to answer. “You got up the moment you saw them, said a thing or two to those boys sitting with you, and they got up as well. You invited them to sit down. You went and sat on the ground right next to them and talked to them the whole time. Well, until the sammies.”
I remembered all that. Or, at least, I remember talking to the older couple on and off all day. Frederick and Basil had been their names, from Toronto. But a question lingered in my head over what Jonah said. “I got under your shy shield because I talked to them?”
“No.” If anyone else had given me the smile he did, I would have thought they were mocking me, but his was too sweet. “Because you were nice to them and the way you smiled at them made you look so much more beautiful. It made me forget all about how good you looked in those shorts. You know Akira gave me such a hard time afterward for talking to you. He was so disappointed it wasn’t him you helped. He talked about you in those shorts all the way back to the flat until I told him to stop.”
Why did I feel embarrassed? “I just like older people,” I explained, knowing that probably lost me points. “They’re honest and easy to talk to. It’s why I liked working at the retirement home.”
Those long fingers curled over mine, covering my entire hand, his thumb sweeping up the side of my hand directly below my pinky finger. “Lucky for me my French is awful, eh?”
My whole heart soared a little bit.
Okay, alotta bit.
And I’d be embarrassed to think that my fingers almost twitched under his, because I had touched hands with a lot of people before. Men and women. His. But never… never like… this. With someone looking at me the way he was, so openly.
Jonah held my hand. With his rough thumb sweeping up and down the bones under my pinky finger, being all honest and Jonah and heartfelt.
And fuck me.
At some point, Jonah looked over so sharply, I almost lost my train of thought. “How could you think I didn’t care about you enough? I wrote you… so many times. I couldn’t bear to look at my own face in the mirror, but I wrote you because I wanted you to know I didn’t forget about you.”
My stomach soured a little bit as I frowned. “You mean four times?”
He frowned. “I sent you thirty-two postcards, Len,” he claimed. “One every other week just about. I missed a few right after… and before I came, but I sent them. My nan bought them and put them in the mail for me while I was with her. I bought the rest. I sent half to the box on your website.” His gaze was bright. “I didn’t know what to say in them at first, but I meant what I