Page 19 of Tipping Point

“What’s going on?”

“Such a gentleman,” she pronounces, both her shoes back on.

He holds out a hand and she takes it, and I watch him wrap long fingers around hers as he steps back and politely helps her up.

“Where are you going?” I ask her. “Where is she going?” I demand from him.

“We’re trading seats.” His accent is heavy again. Why?

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be,” he taunts me.

She steps away, and he collapses into the seat next to me.

He smells like green grass and sunshine and whiskey. Something smoky and dark.

“What the fuck is going on?”

The lady leans over him to talk to me. “It’s first class, dear. I have to take him up on his offer.”

I turn to him, confused. “You’re giving her your first-class seat?”

He shrugs.

“Why?”

“We need to talk.”

“You couldn’t send me a message?”

“Don’t have your number, like.”

“An email, then?”

“Don’t have it.”

I’m speechless.

“Look, Curls, it’s fucking with me. It fucked with the race.”

“My name is Camille.”

“I know.”

His skin is roughly textured, but it looks soft. He has slight scarring. That, along with the five o’clock shadow across his jaw, is distracting me. He has laugh lines around his eyes, so he must have laughed at some stage in his life. His thick bottom lip twitches up at the corner in a grimace, but only for a second, and he smooths it away with the tip of his tongue at the corner of his mouth, running it along the line of his upper lip.

“Then say it.” What is wrong with me?

“Camille,” he obliges. He says it offhand, with a shrug of his shoulder.

It’s gorgeous when he says it. It sounds like someone else’s name.

“What do you want?”

“Rheese.”

“Right.” That helps. He was kind of drawing me in there. Having him throw this in my face is like having a bucket of cold water poured over me, jolting me right back to the present.