Riley went still for just a moment, and then her brightness dimmed like someone had turned down a dial. "Elena, I'm not going to be with him."
I steered her gently toward a bench nearby and sat down beside her. The afternoon sun fell warm and unhurried across her face, and I looked at her really looked. There was something about Janice's features that carried two things at once: the openness of someone very young and the quiet depth of someone who had already lived more than one life inside the same body. That combination, innocence layered over longing, created something striking without her even trying. As a woman, I felt it just looking at her. I didn't believe for a second that Harlan was immune to it. A man didn't lower his pride the way he had stopping car after car in the middle of the road for someone he felt nothing toward.
