to simply stroll around the city in silence, well, I’ve got my walking shoes on. After all you’ve done for me, it’s the least I can do. Even if I’m rough on you sometimes.”
I shook my head. “You’re the strangest man I know, Cyrus.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. Go ahead and insult me.”
“No one else manages to be both a nice person and also a mouthy asshole at the same time.” I tucked my arm into his. “Let’s walk.”
He smiled. “Whatever you say, Fantazia. But you might want to fix your shirt, so you don’t give every guy walking down the street a thrill. Unless you really are some kind of crazy exhibitionist.”
I glanced down. There was a large slit in the chest of my tank top where my assailant’s knife had cut the fabric. My bra had narrowly missed damage, but a lot of cleavage was showing. I changed the garment into a blue halter top that was mostly backless but covered up to my neck.
Cyrus shook his head. “I’ve been meaning to ask you how you conjure up clothes like that. Do you make them out of nothing?”
“Let’s just say somewhere a store lost a bit of inventory.”
“You’re as much of a thief as I am.” He grinned. The expression almost looked flirty. There was no chance he was flirting with me after all of this. Was there?
“Careful there,” I said, making sure to keep my tone light. “You wouldn’t want to go around complimenting me. After coming out here to ‘be my friend,’ as you put it, you might make me start to believe that you don’t hold me entirely in contempt. I might believe you actually like me.”
His eyes stayed strangely unreadable. “I might actually like you.”
“Well.” I didn’t know what to say to that—I like you, too? If that didn’t sound childish, what did? I have a strange urge to pull you into an alley and do very naughty things to you? That would definitely ruin the moment, since he hated it when I put on the sex kitten act. Except that with him it was starting to not be an act. I really did have that urge. But he wouldn’t take it that way.
I decided to say nothing, and felt the awkwardness between us ratchet up a notch.
“So, if you won’t tell me what made you sad,” Cyrus said, breaking the terrible silence, “tell me something that made you happy in your life. Not something that pleased you momentarily, but something that made you life-changingly happy.”
I glanced over at him. Seeing his expression, I snorted. “You thought I was going to say sex, didn’t you? That’s why you put in that bit about nothing that ‘pleased me momentarily.’ ”
He laughed. “I was actually thinking you would say shoes. The women in the EHJ, they can talk about shoes for hours: the colors, the heels . . . and they use adjectives like ‘lickable’ in relation to them.” He paused and gave me a wicked grin. “Sex can make you life-changingly happy. For all your talk, I would have thought you’d know. Sorry to hear you’ve been with the wrong men.”
Damn him. I knew he was just trying to tease me, but considering the thoughts I’d just been having, instead of being insulted I was even more driven to take him somewhere secluded and test his theory about happiness. In fact, forget the seclusion. I was willing to go at it right here and now, which was definitely a sign that something was wrong with me.
“Nothing comes to mind,” I said, trying desperately to put away thoughts of tearing cloth, sweaty skin and the feeling of a brick wall against bare flesh.
He frowned. “Oh, stop that.”
My eyes widened. “Stop what?” He hadn’t picked now as a time to become psychic, had he? Or had I said those things out loud?
“The whole, ‘I’m depressed, life is horrible and meaningless’ shtick. It’s played out.”
“That’s not . . . I wasn’t . . .” I didn’t want to explain why I was so horribly distracted, so I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “When I came to America. The first time.”
Cyrus nodded. “Go on.”
“I’d lived in Europe for so long and had way too many memories attached. There was so much history there, had been so many lifetimes lived, it just got to be too much.”
Cyrus was studying me. “There was a guy, wasn’t there?”
I flinched. This was definitely a piece of my past I didn’t