Eastern Lights (Compass 2)

We went home that night, and I stayed on the sofa with her, watching movies. My mind was running in circles the whole time, trying to figure out how I could fit another part-time job into my schedule to help some more.

25

Connor

Present day

After I returned home, I made sure Aaliyah was okay, then I buried myself in my work. Even as I worked on emailing people back and collecting more details from Damian on the property he’d found in Queens, I couldn’t stop replaying the situation that’d taken place with Aaliyah. Seeing the way she had panicked once she saw Jason’s text message, I knew it must’ve stirred up some intense emotions. She’d been pretty quiet since she arrived at my place, keeping to herself in the guest room.

After a few hours of working, there was a knock on my office door, which was already wide open. I looked up to see Aaliyah with a glass of water in her hand. Her lips were smiling, but her eyes refused to do the same.

“You’re still up,” she stated, leaning against the door, probably to keep from tumbling over from exhaustion.

“You’re still up, too,” I said, turning away from my computer.

She smiled, and I felt the broken cracks that were trying to break through that grin. “Are you a workaholic, Mr. Roe?”

“It depends on how fast my mind is spinning each day.” That evening, after spending time in the hospital, my mind had been spinning extra fast.

She walked into my space and sat down on the floor. She then patted the floor beside her.

An invitation I didn’t think I could pass up.

I lifted my glass of whiskey and walked over to her, taking a seat on the floor. She sipped at her water and gave me that smile that looked so good on her.

“You really shouldn’t work past a certain hour,” she told me. “Your mind needs breaks.”

“Sometimes, the only way my mind gets a break is if I’m working.”

“Fair enough.” She glanced around my office with awe in her eyes. “I think my boss would fire me if she found out I was sleeping over at my client’s house again.”

“To be fair, I wasn’t your client when you first stayed over. Plus, I’m really good with secrets.”

“Is that so?”

“The best, actually. I have a special location in my brain where I keep people’s deepest, darkest secrets caged away.”

“Well, it’s very nice of you to be such a trustworthy source of secrecy.”

“I take it to heart when someone tells me a secret. So, don’t you worry. Your boss will never know about your night spent with me.”

“Thank you. So, why does your mind do that?”

“What?”

“You said your workload depends on how fast your mind is spinning. What makes your mind spin so fast?”

I smirked. “Is this off the record?”

“Scout’s honor.” She saluted.

“Were you a scout as a kid?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “What? No, I’m a journalist.”

“Then you can’t say Scout’s honor. It doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t a scout.”

“Potato, po-tah-to.” She waved me off in a dismissive fashion. “No matter what, I’m not going to tell anyone what we talk about tonight. Your secrets are safely locked in the secret chamber of my brain, too.”

I thumbed the rim of my glass. “I overthink everything. I sometimes think I live in the future more than I live in the now. In order for me to slow the speed of my mind, I focus on what’s in front of me. That normally includes working.”

“Why are you so afraid of the future?”

I chuckled. “Who said I was afraid?”

“Your eyes when you talk.”

“I’m having some déjà vu of when we first met, and you read me,” I joked.

“I thought about you a lot after that night together,” she confessed. “Even after we went our own ways, you stayed on my mind for weeks…months.”

“That went both ways.”

“Truth or truth?” she asked me.

“Truth.”

“Did you ever go back to any of the places we promised not to go?”

I smirked. “Once or twice. I mean, you can only leave so much up to destiny. I just wanted to see you again. I apologize for breaking our agreement.”

“It’s all right. I broke it, too—mainly because the comic bookstore was epic in insane proportions. The nerd in me was called back to that place.”

“Fair enough.”

“I did, however, glance around the corners a few times, hoping to find you.”

“Seems destiny handled the whole bringing us back together angle all on its own.”

“Why are you sad tonight?” she asked, throwing me for a complete loop.

Her stare stayed intensely focused on me, as if she was trying to peel back more layers of my story. That was, after all, her job as a journalist, to get to the root of the story, not to only explore what was on the surface, but to truly dive deep into the meat of a person’s soul.