Missing From Me

26| white hot chocolate

I see him leaving and wrack my brain on how to stop him. "I won't ask you!" I blurt out. He pauses in his footsteps and I try again. "I won't ask you any questions."

I've begun to read Julien and I know he's anxious about me asking him anything related to what I've seen. But will he act differently if I promise him I won't?

"Just do this with me," I tell him.

His shoulders slump as he blows out a breath and slowly turns. An uncontrollable wide smile spreads across my lips.

"May I know why you want to do yoga at practically midnight?"

"No, you may not," I sweetly respond. "Okay, we're doing the classic tree pose first."

He lifts a sock-clad foot to his thigh and connects the palm of his hands to maintain balance.

"Wow, look at you go. Have you done yoga before?" I ask him, positioning myself.

"No."

He begins to lose his balance and mutters something underneath his breath. "Try to find something to focus your attention on."

His eyes flicker over my face and I raise my eyebrows. The back of my neck heats up. "I meant something unmoving."

"You're pretty still."

I send him a look. "You're making it hard not to be."

"Your problem," he responds, lazily eyeing me up and down.

I scoff at him, my stomach flipping and flopping. When he continues to stumble slightly, I ask, "Do you know why they call this the tree pose?"

"Why?"

"It's supposed to give you a sense of a rooted tree. Imagine a huge, mighty tree still as ever in a storm. Feel the groundedness and the strength of your leg."

He adjusts his position once more until he finally finds his balance. To my surprise, his gaze doesn't veer away from my eyes and it's a memorable moment. The intensity and peace of it. My breathing gets quicker and heavier and I gulp in unease.

I'm supposed to be in control.

"Now what?" he murmurs.

"Now you breathe."

He looks like he wants to protest but he doesn't and follows my lead. I watch him inhale deeply, hold, and release until I lose count. And then I'm the one who's falling. I save myself by grabbing Julien's shoulders and he holds my hand to steady me. The moment his fingers touch mine, a wave of electricity snakes up my arm. His cologne hits my nose–an intoxicating mix of cedar, citrus, lavender and something I can't place.

I wonder if he felt it too and lift my gaze to his unreadable eyes. "Strengthen the trunk of your tree," he says.

"What?" I blink.

"Your core."

He makes everything so tantalizing and I hate it. Energy crackles between us and I clear my throat, "Right. You know what, let's change positions."

"Into what?"

"The corpse pose."

I demonstrate by first sitting cross-legged on the floor and then lying down on my back. "You want to do this pose on the balcony?"

"Yes, lie down now," I tell him.

He squats and instead of lying back, he looks down at me quite seriously. Locks of hair fall over his forehead and my heart gallops inside my chest. "What is it?"

He leans in closer and my eyes flicker down to his lips for a second. What's he doing?

"You don't know anything about yoga, do you?"