I shifted, barely. The toe of her shoe grazed mine. She didn’t pull back.
For one full second I thought we’d do it. I thought I’d finally say screw it and close the space between us. I wanted to let my hands memorize her face, her waist, the slope of her hips. I thought I’d feel her sink into me like she did in every version of my dreams.
A cackle rang out. “Found you!”
Winnie burst into the space with triumph smeared all over her cheeks, her braid unraveling like a flag of war. Selenejumped, startled, and I blinked hard, the moment evaporating like steam off pavement.
“You shouldn’t hidetogether.” She laughed. “It makes it too easy to find you.”
“Win,” Selene said, breathless, pressing a hand to her chest. “You are terrifying.”
Winnie beamed like it was a compliment. “I told you I was good.”
“You were born for this,” I said, unfolding myself and stepping into the sunlight. “I’ll have to find somewhere even trickier next time. But right now I’ve got to run. I have a rescheduled game tonight.” I ruffled Winnie’s hair, and just like that the spell dissolved, but it didn’t really fade. It stayed under my skin, crackling and hot.
I caught Selene’s eye one last time as we walked back toward the porch, her hand brushing lightly against her hip like she could still feel the space where I’d almost touched her.
She moved toward her daughter with that careful ease she used when she didn’t want me to see she was flustered.
I just watched her, my hands still balled at my sides, realizing that pretending got harder by the day.
The sun had dipped lowby the time we wrapped up the game, the whole field awash in a burnt-amber glow that stuck to our skin like sap. Hayes had sweat slicked down the back of his neck and Brody was nursing a beer like he’d just run a marathon instead of half jogged through six innings. Cal was the only one still energized—too competitive to pretend it was just a small-town league game.
Collectively the team voted for tailgating in the parking lot instead of making the trek to the Lantern. We dragged lawn chairs out of the back of Hayes’s truck and let them scrape across the gravel like we were staking claim. Music played low from Hayes’s phone, all scratchy classic rock, and someone had cracked open a cooler that smelled like hops and melted ice.
I grabbed a beer, still cold enough to sting my palm, and sank into the folding chair across from Brody. The plastic sagged under my weight. It was the first time all day I felt still.
“Domestic bliss looks good on you, kid,” Hayes said with a smirk, peeling off his batting gloves with too much flair. “You’re showing up early, remembering the snacks. Was that a wet wipe I saw you use earlier?”
“The man’s folding laundry too.” Brody lifted his chin, happy to join in the teasing. “You can see it in the shoulders.”
I laughed, slow and easy, because it was better than saying what was true—that they weren’t wrong. The towels in Selene’s bathroom had creases in them from my careful folding. My boots had found a home just inside her front door.
I shrugged like I hadn’t memorized the way her mouth looked when she was half asleep and curled on the couch, pretending she wasn’t exhausted from a long day hunched over her desk. “She’s my boss,” I said.
That earned me a round of side-eyes.
“Sure, man,” Brody said, dragging the words out slowly. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“No, really,” I added, and the words felt like chewing on gravel. “I’m there for Winnie when Selene needs to work. That’s the job.”
Nobody said anything for a beat. Just the low clink of a bottle against teeth.
Then Cal said, “She definitely seems less stressed out.”
I didn’t answer, only swallowed past the gravel in my throat.
“And that,” Hayes said with a laugh as he clinked his bottle against Cal’s, “is a damn miracle. My sister has been all go and no whoa since the minute Winnie was born.” His eyes narrowed on me and I tried—and failed spectacularly—not to squirm in my seat. “What’s she paying you anyway? I’ll double it as a thank-you.”
“Uh—” I cleared a scratch in my throat. “Nothing, actually. I’m just helping out.”
“You see that?” Brody leaned in to punch my leg. “A Good Samaritan.”
Hayes’s noncommittal hum wedged in my chest. That man may have the shittiest luck alive, but it didn’t take luck to see what I was barely hiding.
I was a fucking wreck over his sister. Ever since hide-and-seek in the yard, I couldn’t stop thinking about her—us hiding behind the carriage house together. Her breath shallow. Her mouth so fucking close.
I took a pull from the bottle, swallowing around the ache that had lodged deep in my throat and hadn’t budged in weeks.
