Page 94 of The Rut in the Road

Wewere ridiculous.

“Find a parking spot,” I told him.

He glanced over at me, opened his mouth, then closed it, driving past the front door and around the corner, then halfway up the block before parallel parking. Then he turned to look at me. “Are you?—”

“Come up,” I said. I was still angry, although much less than I had been a few minutes before. But I didn’t want to get out of the car with both of us angry and hurt.

“If you’re sure?” He wasn’t usually uncertain.

I nodded, then waited for him to open his door before opening mine.

He followed me upstairs, his breathing steady and even, although I was huffing a little by the time I got to my floor. I fumbled the keys a little, but managed to unlock the door and lead us both inside.

I turned to look back at him. “All I have is frozen pizza or boxed macaroni and cheese,” I told him.

“I can order us Thai,” he offered.

I wasn’t offended that he didn’t want either of my meager food offerings. “Okay,” I replied.

“You sure?” he asked me, pulling out his phone and tapping at the food-ordering app.

I nodded, then went to the kitchen. I didn’t have food, but I did still have beer. I didn’t drink it, but he did, and I made a point of getting some every time I went to the store so that I’d have some for him. I knew he preferred whiskey or bourbon, but I really didn’t have that in my budget. I barely even had the money for the occasional bottle of cheap wine.

I took out a bottle of beer, opened it, then filled a mug of water for myself and turned to go back to the main room, findingRaj leaning against the doorway. I held out the bottle of beer, and he reached out and took it from me.

“I got you chicken panang,” he told me. I nodded. It was my favorite thing at My Noodle—panang curry with a skewer of extra chicken. Raj always changed what he got, sometimes a curry, sometimes rice, usually with shrimp, often coconut tofu or spring rolls, and always calamari. “Rayn…” He trailed off.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to fight with him, but I also didn’t want to be coddled. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I told him.

He nodded, then took a long drink from the beer. Longer than he usually did. “I?—”

“Tell me about your day,” I said, shifting my weight on tired feet because he was still blocking the doorway.

He stood away from the frame, then moved back into the main room, letting me pass by him and settle in the smaller beanbag. He looked down at the other one. “You bought another beanbag?” he asked, apparently just having noticed it.

“It’s silly for you or Vi to have to sit in the office chair, or to have to look up at me sitting in the office chair,” I replied.

“You don’t want to share it with me?”

I studied him. “I want you to have the choice,” I replied. “Because you usually end up mostly on the floor, and it doesn’t look comfortable.”

He lowered himself cross-legged to sit on the floor beside me. “I don’t mind,” he said softly. “If you don’t.”

I shifted in the beanbag, adjusting my body so that, if he wanted, he could put his head on my stomach. “I don’t mind,” I told him.

He let out a soft sigh, then moved until the back of his head rested against my belly, eyes closed. I did what I usually did, letting my fingers trail through his thick, dark hair. As I stroked, his body relaxed and the frown lines marring his forehead eased.

It was strange, I thought, how easy it was to soothe him. All I had to do was touch him, to run my fingers through his hair or rest a hand on his thigh or press my cheek against his back, and he’d let go of so much of the tension he carried in that beautiful, muscular body.

I let him stay there until his phone buzzed, notifying him that our dinner had been delivered to the downstairs lobby.

He pushed himself up. “I’ll get it.”

I let him go, my body feeling cold and unanchored in his absence.

I lickedsauce off the spoon I’d used to ladle curry over my rice and chicken, then put it down in the bowl beside the sink where Raj was washing the dishes. Some of tension was back in his shoulders, although our conversation over dinner had been perfectly normal—about what I’d done at work prepping for the séance the following night, and about the case research he’d been doing, both on the hit-and-run killer case and on a few others they’d been tasked with solving. I’d asked how they managed more than one at once, and he’d made a face, answering, “Badly.”

I stepped behind him, putting my arms around his waist and my cheek against the hard muscle of his back. I could hear his heart beat, a whoosh-whoosh of blood moving through his body, and feel the steady expansion of his lungs as he drew in a deep breath, then sighed it out.