Word and Breath (Wordless Chronicles)

by Susannah Noel

  Mikel didn’t argue, accepting her refusal good-naturedly. “So when can I see you again?”

  Something about the question—about the absolute incongruity of this gorgeous, charismatic stranger asking her out for no apparent reason—caused a sudden wave of suspicious to slam into her. “What do you want from me?” she demanded, taking a step back and almost stumbling on the stoop.

  Mikel’s eyes widened. He looked genuinely confused and slightly offended. “I just want to get to know you better. I thought I’d made that clear. To tell you the truth, I was waiting in the coffee shop on purpose, hoping to see you pass by.”

  “But why?” Her guard hadn’t lowered, despite his convincing response. “You must be able to have any woman you want. What do you want with me?”

  Unexpectedly, Mikel’s face cleared, and he gave a wry laugh. “I see. You underrate your own charms.”

  “My charms, as you put it, are dubious at best. And you haven’t answered my question.”

  He gazed down at her face, his black eyes softening in admiration. “You know, I think you really don’t know how beautiful you are.”

  She swallowed hard, pleasure and confusion washing over her. No one had ever called her beautiful before, and Mikel seemed to really mean it.

  She felt beautiful. For the first time she could remember.

  “Anyway, you’re wrong about me.”

  Riana had lost track of the conversation. “About what?”

  “I can’t have any woman I want. You keep shutting me down even when I use my best moves. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested.”

  His answer was so natural, so self-deprecating, and so adorable, Riana relaxed her shoulders and couldn’t hold back a laugh.

  When she saw his eyes warm with deeper appreciation, her cheeks grew hot with an unfamiliar shyness.

  It was kind of nice, she thought—fighting the urge to squirm—to enjoy something so relatively normal. So much of the week hadn’t been normal.

  “You’re too much,” she told him as she opened the door of her building, laughter still in her voice. She knew very well she was flirting back when she gave him a teasing look over her shoulder. “Maybe you should think of some new moves.”

  His gaze turned almost quiet for a moment, although it was still as intense and attentive as always. He reached out and brushed her cheek gently with his knuckles.

  At his touch, she felt a jolt of feeling—thrilling, intoxicating, completely foreign. A feeling of almost intimate connection, from no more than the light touch. Her skin broke out in goosebumps as she stared at him.

  Flushed and breathless, she jerked a step backward.

  He grinned—almost boyish as the setting sun shone on his fair hair. “I’ll work on some new moves then, as you suggest. And I’ll be at the coffee shop tomorrow. In case you want to stop by and judge them.”

  She couldn’t help but smile back.

  ***

  She didn’t even pretend the following day. When she saw Mikel at a table through the window of the coffee shop, she waved and went in to join him.

  He bought her a cup of coffee and they talked for almost an hour. Neither shared anything particularly personal, but Riana was surprised by how many interests and observations they had in common. She could have chatted with him all evening and not even begun to get bored.

  The next day they talked over coffee again, longer than the day before. And the following day yet again. And the day after that. Soon, she was telling him about Jannie and her mysterious illness. About her parents being killed in the raid on the Eastern bank. About how she’d become a Reader. About her grandfather.

  Mikel seemed to want to know everything about her, to know her more deeply than anyone had since Connor.

  And she wanted him to know her that well.

  Six days after they first met, he walked her across the street to her door as he always did. It was already getting dark outside. They’d talked over coffee for more than two hours.

  Riana’s heart was racing in expectation of saying good-night to him. Each day, he grew bolder as they parted. The night before, he’d kissed her lightly on the cheek and a rush of sensation had overwhelmed her.

  “Have dinner with me tomorrow,” he suggested, as he did each evening.

  Riana startled herself by saying, “Okay. Why not?”

  He smiled with pleased surprise. “Should I pick you up? I wouldn’t mind meeting your sister.”

  The idea of his meeting Jannie made her nervous. It would make this whole thing real. “Why don’t I just meet you at the coffee shop at around seven?”

  “Sounds good. I’m looking forward to it.”

  That was the moment she should have started to open the door to go in, but she didn’t. She just stood like a ninny and stared up at him.

  He was so incredibly handsome, and—what was more—she felt like she really knew him. He hadn’t told her a lot of details about his background and life, but that did nothing to mar her certainty that they’d made a real connection.

  His face changed as he looked down on her. It softened, warmed into a palpable heat. “Riana,” he murmured, taking her face in both his hands, the touch sending shivers of excitement down her spine.

  She leaned into him, instinctively wanting to feel even more.

  He responded to her silent invitation and tilted his head into a soft kiss, brushing her lips very lightly with his.

  Another jolt of feeling, so powerful she was panting as she pulled away,

  “What?” she breathed, in response to absolutely nothing.

  He smiled and stroked her hot cheek with his knuckle. To her relief, his breathing wasn’t slow and even either, and the color had deepened on his face. Evidently, the kiss had affected him too.

  He was leaning in for another kiss when Riana experienced a slice of pure panic. She’d never felt this way before, and it terrified her.

  She was used to being unruffled, unnoticed, safe. She wasn’t used to this.

  She pulled away from him abruptly.

  For just a moment, he looked disappointed, frustrated. But that brief expression transformed almost instantly. He smiled at her again.”I guess you believe in taking it slow.”

  “I do,” she admitted, dropping her eyes. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t mind. Do you still want to have dinner with me?”

  Her flare of anxiety was already subsiding, and she couldn’t stand the thought of spending the next day—much less all the days after that—without seeing Mikel. “Yeah. I do. I’ll see you tomorrow at the coffee shop.”

  Three

  “Do you have plans for lunch?”

  Riana shifted her eyes from the text she was studying and blinked up into Jenson’s face. “What?”

  Jenson’s mouth gave a faint twitch. “Lunch plans. Do you have them?”

  The question was so unexpected that Riana took a few seconds to process it. “Just the usual. Sandwich and apple in the break room.”

  “Then how about you have lunch with me? There’s a new bistro down the street I’ve been wanting to try.”

  Riana’s lower lip fell open. “You’re asking me to lunch?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Why?” She regretted the bald, incredulous demand after she voiced it, particularly when she heard his amused reply.

  “Being friendly?”

  Her suspicious nature waged a brief struggle with her sense of humor, but her humor came out on top. She snickered at his ironic reply. “All right. I suppose. But I’ll have you know I find the whole thing very strange.”

  Jenson’s attractive, mobile face twisted into a half-smirk. “No wonder you don’t go out to lunch very often—if you put everyone through the wringer who asks you.”

  She’d put Mikel through the wringer too.

  “Twelve-thirty?” she suggested, ignoring the stray thought.

  “Sounds good.”

  Jenson returned to his desk, and Riana turned back to the text she was reading.<
br />
  She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t believe Jenson was interested in her sexually—he’d never shown any interest before and he was too old for her anyway. There must be something else prompting his unexpected invitation.

  Maybe he was acting on gratitude because she’d covered up the “wordless” anomaly she’d found last week.

  Or maybe it was something else.

  Riana knew some people thought she was paranoid, but she’d had good reason to be suspicious and slow to trust other people. All too often they’d just stab you in the back.

  Her parents had trusted friends, and they’d died because of it. She’d trusted Connor, and he’d vanished off the face of the earth.

  So she was sure Jenson must have an ulterior motive for this lunch date.

  She wished she knew what it was so she could be better prepared.

  ***

  She still hadn’t figured it out when twelve-thirty rolled around.

  She felt very weird—particularly knowing the eyes of most of their colleagues were on them—as Jenson casually strolled over to her cubicle.

  “Ready?” he asked with a smile.

  She nodded, grabbed her bag, and walked with him to the exit, trying not to squirm as she felt the office’s collective gaze on their retreating forms.

  When Jenson put a hand on the small of her back to guide her out the door first, Riana couldn’t help but jerk her head over to stare at him.

  His mouth twitched slightly, but he didn’t move his hand. It felt strange on her lower back, and she didn’t like the feeling at all.

  “I figured I should support the obvious explanation for our going to lunch together,” Jenson murmured, speaking low even though they were the only ones in the hallway. “Rather than have them speculate about something else.”

  At least this confirmed her suspicions that he had other motives for asking her to lunch.

  She wanted to demand he tell her as they left the building and were surrounded by the hot, familiar smell of the city. It was late October but still felt like it should be summer. She held the question back, however.

  Partly because she figured he’d tell her when he thought best. And partly because she was kind of scared to find out.

  Irrationally, she felt a coil of anxiety tighten in her gut—a vague dread without apparent cause.

  She tried not to dwell on it. Instead, she set herself to enjoying the treat of going out to eat, as they took a table in the café and ordered their salads and soup. She got to go out to eat for dinner too. It was definitely a red-letter day.

  Jenson had already declared he was going to pay for their lunches, which allowed Riana to indulge without guilt.

  He didn’t appear to be in a hurry to get to the point. He chatted pleasantly about the setting, making clever commentary on the other people in the restaurant. He asked her a little about her childhood, which Riana answered with a guarded precision she’d developed over the years. He laughed at her as she visibly enjoyed the food, sighing over the marinated strawberries on the salad and moaning as she tasted the crab bisque.

  Jannie was a pretty good cook, but she wasn’t particularly adventurous in cuisine. Riana, however jaded about human nature, wasn’t afraid to enjoy the simple pleasures of food.

  She didn’t even care that Jenson laughed at her—since there was both irony and fondness in his expression.

  She scowled at him, of course, but she was pretty sure he knew she wasn’t genuinely offended.

  He let her finish her meal before he moved into the real purpose of their lunch date.

  Riana saw the shift in his expression as he put down his soup spoon neatly on his saucer. She took a long sip of her water and felt that knot of anxious dread—briefly diverted by the food—return as a weight in her stomach.

  “So,” she said, the word half-question and half-segue.

  “So,” Jenson repeated. He cleared his throat and, for the first time, looked vaguely reluctant. “I wanted to thank you—for helping me out last week.”

  He didn’t need to explain what he was referring to. “You’re welcome. I think.” The nervousness fluttered up into her chest, and she clasped her hands in her lap to keep them still.

  “I’d like to give you an explanation—since I assume you want to know what’s going on now that you got pulled into it.”

  Jenson’s dark blue eyes held hers, and she was the one who looked away first.

  She glanced over to the counter at the generic business people on their lunch break paying for sandwiches. “I don’t know if I want to know or not.”

  “I can understand that. But I’m going to tell you anyway.”

  Something about the blunt challenge in his voice made her suck in her breath and stare back at him. He still looked vaguely reluctant, but he also looked confrontational. As if he were daring her to hear what he had to say.

  One part of Riana’s mind wanted to act like a petulant child and defy him—getting up and leaving before he could say anything more. That was an unworthy part of herself, though. She wasn’t a child. And she could at least hear him out, since he clearly believed it was important.

  She didn’t have to make any decisions yet. A truth she used to soothe the frightened twisting in her belly.

  “The anomaly you found—the word ‘wordless’ in unexpected contexts—is part of a written code used by the Front.”

  As simple as that. As obvious. As life-changing.

  Riana bit her lip and stared at Jenson blindly.

  “I asked you not to report it because it would do significant damage to the Front’s message system if the Union became of aware of it.”

  They were on the corner of the patio, seated close together in a curved booth like lovers. He was speaking too low for anyone else to hear.

  But Riana felt like the words had just been screamed at her. Her mouth was dry, so she took another sip of water.

  Jenson paused, letting her process what he’d said.

  She had no idea what to say. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you helped me. Because you deserve to know.” He paused for a beat. “And because I want to bring you in.”

  That was what she’d been afraid of. What her instincts had told her was the end of this conversation. “And if I don’t want to be brought in?”

  “Sometimes our personal preferences can’t matter when we look at the big picture.” He pushed his long fingers through his dark hair. “I think you need to be part of this.”

  “What gives you the right to decide for me?”

  “I’m not going to decide for you. I’m just giving you all the information and letting you decide for yourself.”

  “You’ve already gotten me involved. You’ve already put me in danger.”

  Jenson nodded, for the first time glancing down. “I know that. That’s part of the price of what we’re doing. In telling you more, I’m going to put you in even further danger.”

  Riana’s cheeks were flushing with emotion, even as it felt like the blood drained from her face. “What makes you think you can even trust me? What if I turn around and go to the authorities?”

  “It’s a risk,” he replied with a half-shrug. “But I don’t think you’re going to do that. You kept faith with me last week. You resent the Union as much as I do. They killed your parents. And did worse to your grandfather. Although you won’t admit it, I know you want to see justice in this world. That’s what we’re working for. You won’t betray us.”

  He was right—an annoying fact and one that put her at a disadvantage. “What makes you think you know me so well?”

  “I’ve been watching you for years, Riana. Since you were fourteen and started working in the office. You aren’t as private as you’d like to believe. You hate injustice. You have a generous spirit—although no longer an open one. And you believe in something good. Your parents—”

  “I don’t want to talk about my parents.”

  “All right. We don’t have to.
But at least acknowledge that I’ve had the time to get to know certain truths about you. You’re trying to live a life without any purpose, and you’re never going to be satisfied that way. You need this, Riana.” He reached out and put a hand on her forearm. “You need it. Let me bring you in.”

  His eyes were mesmerizing, and his voice pierced through long-held defenses.

  She recognized the truth in his words.