But I can’t help myself. She’s the sun, and I’m drawn in.
That’s what I am. A fool, or a moth, or a man who’s been in the dark for far too long.
Her breath is shallow but steady. My fingers linger just a moment longer against her skin before I let them trail softly along her jaw.
“You’re warm,” I murmur. “You always feel like summer.”
She laughs softly, but it catches, gets tangled in this thick tension humming between us. “Is that a good thing? Where I’m from, summer can feel humid and suffocating.”
I smile.
“Evan!” a voice calls out, interrupting this moment and making Rachel step back.
I turn and see Melanie running toward us.
“You’ve been ignoring my calls,” she says with annoyance.
I shrug my shoulders because it’s true. I turned my phone on silent for a reason.
“Well, hi, Rachel,” Melanie says.
“Hi,” Rachel replies nervously. “Um, we were just getting dinner. Evan lost his company credit card, and I have mine, so we decided it was best just to go together and…”
I grin at Rachel’s rambling, trying to excuse away the reason we’re together like it’s a secret that needs to stay in a diary a littlelonger. I don’t blame her. Melanie is a lot to handle, and by a lot, I mean she’s all deadlines and practiced drama that sells books. Going off script is not fun for her. It’s irritating.
“Right,” Melanie says, unimpressed. “Evan, we need to go over the itinerary for tomorrow. Now.”
Rachel looks down at her bare feet, and she hurries over to grab her sandals. I watch her slip them back on, her straps slipping on her shoulders.
“Okay,” I say to Melanie, even though my breath is still shaky from what just almost happened.
If Melanie had been five minutes later…
If Rachel hadn’t stepped back…
Rachel looks up at me, and for a flicker of a second, our eyes meet. Her smile is small, unsure. Like she’s wondering, too.
We walk back to the hotel, Melanie’s voice a constant hum beside me, but I keep looking over at Rachel, and she keeps looking over at me.
When we get on the elevator, allthreeof us, Rachel pushes the number nine. And when we arrive at her floor, she silently gets off.
“See you tomorrow, Rachel,” Melanie says without looking up from her phone while she’s still talking about all the boring details.
But Rachel doesn’t reply to Melanie, instead, she looks at me and smiles. This one is different. It’s not nervous or unsure. It’s like she took the walk back to the hotel to process everything that just happened, and she knows.
She knows everything I didn’t say. Everything I didn’t do. Everything I wished I would have done.
And just before the elevator doors slide shut, she mouths two words: “Me too.”
I stare at the closed doors for a second too long.
Melanie is still talking, still going on about book signings, a dinner with a fan, and more, but her voice fades behind the only thing I canhear—
The echo of something unfinished. Something waiting.
Tomorrow can have its schedule, but tonight, I’ll be replaying every word, every smile, every taco-laced confession, because we’ve just started this part of our story, and I want to make sure we use all the right words going forward.
Chapter 31
