I bring it up to the desk to show him.
For a long moment, he simply stares at me and not my offering, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine, as if trying to know all my secrets.
But the thing is that I don’t have any.
Well, apart from that soulmate thing.
So I let him study me. I let him stare at me and pick me apart. I let his penetrating, intense chocolate chip eyes dig deep and peer into my soul. Which I imagine perks up and sighs at being under his scrutiny.
When he’s studied me to his heart’s content, he glances down.
He stares at the object for a couple of seconds before lifting his eyes. “A phone.”
My fingers flex around the cold object — my old phone that I’d left back at the mansion when I was sent to St. Mary’s. The one he put the tracker on, but it’s not important right now.
“Yes,” I say, nodding my head. “But what’s on the phone is more important.”
“And what’s on the phone?”
Right.
Okay.
Shifting yet again, I say, “It’s my trust.” He frowns and I explain, “In you. I’m giving this to you to show you that I trust you. That I feel safe with you. Despite whatever you did. And I also want you to know that you can trust me. And you can feel safe with me. Despite whatever I did.” I glance down at the phone then. “This is me wiping the slate clean between us. You know, and putting everything that has happened behind us. This is me waving the white flag.”
I nod again.
I also put the phone on his desk and bring my hands back to my lap.
Still staring at it, I continue, “Uh, okay. Yeah. So…” I sigh, rubbing my sweaty palms up and down my skirt. “It’s in the photos folder. I’m gonna leave this with you and you can look at it, uh, whenever you have time and if you’d like to discuss something with me regarding this, uh, you know where to find me and —”
“I’d like to discuss it.”
I jerk my eyes up. “What?”
He hasn’t even looked at the phone; I can tell. Not beyond that half- second glance.
All this time, he’s been looking at me. Staring at me, watching me, and my already hot cheeks heat up at the realization.
They heat up because his eyes are shimmering with something. Something that makes me breathless. Something that makes me bite my lip.
At which point, he orders, growling, “Right now.”
That makes me breathless too.
His growl.
But I manage to ask, “But I thought you had an appointment right after and —”
“Fuck the appointment.”
My toes curl. “But I really think you should see it after I leave.”
“I really think I should see it now.”
“But —”
“Now.”
That growl is the thickest I think. The roughest and the deepest I’ve ever heard from him.
And it makes me obey him. It makes me go for the phone.
This time, it feels heavy when I pick it up. And when I come to my feet, the weight of it grows heavier.
It only keeps growing with every step I take toward him.
So by the time I reach him — which only takes like five seconds but they are enough — I’m a breathless mess. My phone is too heavy and my fingers are trembling, and it’s almost a relief when I offer it to him.
Not that he takes it right away.
Sitting there, in his luxurious leather chair turned toward me, revealing his sprawled thighs and shiny Italian loafers, he first watches me with his dark eyes. He rubs his mouth with his left pinkie while he considers me for a few moments.
I’m not sure what he’s thinking but I’d really like him to hurry up.
Because if he doesn’t, I’m going to drop the phone.
It’s as if he can read my thoughts — which is quite possible, to be honest — so he goes for it. He reaches out and grabs the phone from my hand, his silver ring tapping against the glass.
The dull sound makes me fist my school skirt.
For a second, all I can do is stare at that phone in his large hand. Stare at his big thumb, his roughened knuckles as he holds that device in his hand.
And that’s when I relax.
Because it’s his hand.
His.
My phone — my trust — is in his hand and what I told him stands corrected.
I do trust him. I do feel safe with him.
It has happened gradually over the course of the last few weeks and it was cemented last night.
So with all the trust in my heart, I repeat, “It’s in the photos folder.”
And then, I simply watch him tap his fingers on the screen, go to the location I pointed out and… freeze.
Yeah, he freezes.
As in, literally freezes with his thumb hovering over the screen, halted in its track to tap on it.