They sat in silence as Pat packed herself off and went out, the sound from the street below quiet. The fan clicked uncertainly but continued to provide some relief.
“I’m going to sweat myself to death,” Robin announced a few minutes later.
They’ve been sitting quietly, neither of them accomplishing anything much, but neither willing to move, to leave. Cormoran hasn’t been able to look at her for hours, wishing he were a braver man. More willing to say the things that lurk behind his breastbone, instead of wanting things to stay the same. He can’t stop thinking about the conversation they’d agreed to forget.
“If I could take off my skin, I would,” he agrees. “Too fuckin’ hot.”
for every “” received in my inbox i’ll post a section of one of my WIPs for six-sentence sunday
“What I think about you and the job is that you are brilliant at it. I had a decade of training. I did hundreds of cases with SIB. You’ve had none of that, and you’re just as good as me. It’s actually quite annoying.”
As he chewed now, Strike thought that he would never again be able to taste the tart-spicy-sweet sticking to the roof of his mouth without seeing Robin as she was now, her hair a tangled mess around her face, golden and shining where it was hit by the sparse light filtering through his tiny bedroom window; legs long and bare and freckled and folded underneath her, her toast balancing precariously on her knee and mug clutched tightly in her hands for warmth – her fingers were often cold in the early morning, he knew. And without intending it, without conscious thought, the words bubbled up and out – thickly, through a mouthful of toast and marmalade.
