Page 77 of His Wall

I stood up.

She tensed. Not afraid. Alert. Her weight shifted to the balls of her feet, and her right hand drifted a half-inch closer to her hip. I watched her do it and the agent in her did not know it was a reflex.

I crossed the room. Slowly. Two steps. Three. She did not back up. I stopped a foot from her at the kitchen counter.

I looked at her face.

The jaw I had told her was sharp. The gray eyes that never flinched. The mouth that had kissed me at a railing, on a terrace, in my bed and lied to me in between every single one of them.

"It all makes sense now."

She said nothing.

"You knew things you should not have known. The hot and cold. The walls. The sob story that was too clean. You read contracts like a lawyer and rooms like a cop."

I almost laughed.

"I thought you were the most confusing woman I had ever met. Turns out you were just undercover."

"Julian — "

"I have one more question."

She waited.

"Right now. This. You are standing in this kitchen with no cover left and no assignment to hide behind. Is this you? The real one?"

"Yes."

"Good."

I let it sit.

I looked at her standing there with her shoulders square and her chin a quarter-inch up and her hands flat at her sides, holding herself.

"You are still doing it."

"Doing what?"

"Standing at attention like I am about to debrief you. The cover is blown, Leah. You can stop clenching."

Her jaw tightened.

She did not like the name in my mouth. The reflex was small and fast. Gone in half a second, but I saw it.

I liked it.

"I am going to unravel you."

"Excuse me?"

"That tight, wound-up, locked-down thing you do. I am going to take it apart."

She crossed her arms. "You can't."

"I have been doing it all along. I just did not know what I was unwinding."

She was looking at me. Her gray eyes were on mine, her mouth was a flat line, and her arms were crossed in front of her chest.