When we got back to the shop, Trey insisted I shower and put on clean clothes since I, to use his exact word, “reeked.” Which I did, a peculiar blend of sweat, old pot smoke, and the chemical wallop of the shop’s air freshener. So I washed my hair twice with his shampoo, then put on freshly washed jeans and one of his ancient Atlanta PD sweatshirts, items I’d liberated during my most recent plunder. When I got back downstairs, he was lying on his back under the counter, wiring the new monitor into the security system video feed.
I scrubbed my hair with a towel. “Do you need some help?”
“No.” The sound of rummaging intensified. “Did I leave the screwdriver up there?”
“It’s behind your head.”
“Oh.”
He retrieved the screwdriver and returned his attention to the installation. The effects of whatever Gabriella had given him were wearing off—I could see the first spit and flare of exasperation coming back—but on the whole, he was remarkably calm, especially considering the afternoon he’d had.
“Trey? I know how olfactory triggering works—neural connectivity, hippocampal activation, all that.”
He stopped messing with the screwdriver and looked at me. “You took my book.”
“Borrowed it. On Eric’s recommendation. So I get why you pegged at the skate shop, but why not earlier, in the park? I could smell marijuana there as well, pretty strong, so I know you could smell it too.”
“I could, yes.” He pushed himself to standing and went to the computer. “I don’t know why it happened in one place and not the other.”
He double-checked the four-plex video feed, making sure that he had access through his cell phone, through my cell phone, through the laptop. He wouldn’t be satisfied until all the deadbolts were deadbolted and the locks locked, until he’d made certain no villains lurked in any nook or cranny.
I sat on the counter next to him. “Does it happen a lot? Olfactory triggers?”
“Somewhat. But usually not so…violent.”
I slid an inch closer to him, catching the mingled scent of starched cotton and soap and his evergreen aftershave. Yes, I knew about olfactory triggers. I exhaled softly, ran my foot along his calf…
He didn’t look up from the computer. “Tai—”
“I know, I know.” I snatched my foot back. “You have a strategy.”
“I do.”
“Well, you’d best speed it up. I am officially love-starved, boyfriend, and it sucks.”
He raised his head and regarded me with fresh curiosity. “Love-starved? Really?”
I froze. There it was. The L-word. And there was Trey—patient, polite, but not backing down one bit.
I felt a blush rising. “I meant to say sex-starved.”
“Oh.”
“Because I’m not…I mean, it’s not like…you know.”
The words hung in mid-air, but the universe was swinging like a metronome, back and forth. Tick tock. He crossed his arms, then deliberately uncrossed them. Shifted his weight to neutral stance and then back to natural, as if he couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do next.
“Yes,” he said. “I know. I think I do anyway. Do I?”
I could feel the blood draining from my head, raging in my chest. He was waiting, I was waiting, each of us waiting for the other to do…what? And I knew that one move from either of us would tip the balance, and we’d both tumble, head over heels, into something vast and maybe endless, like the expanding edge of the universe.
And then my damn phone rang. It buzzed and vibrated and shrilled, insistent and impossible to ignore.
Trey didn’t even blink. “That’s yours.”
“I know.”
He glanced at the readout. “It’s Richard.”
I cursed under my breath. Now he decided to call me back.
The phone rang again.
I sighed. “Can we put a bookmark here? At this exact moment? And come back to it later, when the freaking phone isn’t ringing off the freaking hook?”
Trey nodded. “Of course.”
But he was wrong. It was gone. Whatever he’d been about to do, whatever I’d been about to say, it had crumbled. The moment dissolving. There was no use snatching at it. It was like ashes blowing on the wind.
I cursed again and picked up my phone. “Hey, Richard, thanks for returning my call.”