I laughed. “Ah, so you’ve got a sweet tooth.”
We stopped at a café and grabbed lemonade sweetened with local honey. When I handed her the cup, our fingers brushed, hers cool from the walk, soft, and somehow explosive.A fuse lit.
We found a bench and sat for a while, sipping in silence while people-watching, but the calm was only surface level. The fuse was now burning hot between us. Every so often, our gazes met and held. When her eyes tracked the clouds, mine tracked her. The flush of pink on her lips from the lemonade’s kiss yanked at something deep.
Each moment I had my hand on her had chipped away at my restraint. I wanted to kiss her on this very bench.
We stayed there longer than we needed to, letting the silence stretch. When her knee brushed mine, neither of us moved. I told myself it was the comfort of her warmth that kept us thigh to thigh. But the truth was, I was tracking every inch of space between us.
Eventually, we stood, discarded the cups in a trash can nearby, and started back toward the hotel. The streets were quieter now, our steps matching without effort. My pulse had that dangerous rhythm—steady enough to keep my head clear, fast enough to make me reckless. Her sleeve brushed my arm once, twice, and I wondered if she noticed.
I had to look straight ahead so I wouldn’t stare at her mouth. Was she keeping her eyes forward for the same reason? Or was I imagining the small pauses in her stride, or the way her fingers curled as if she was thinking about reaching for my hand?
By the time the hotel came into view, the fuse between us felt shorter. I told myself to calm the impulse before we walked in, but the question kept circling: Was she doing the same?
We stopped outside her room. She leaned back against the door and gazed up at me. I reached for her hand, and she let me take it, cool skin, racing pulse. A jolt shot through me. I stepped in closer; her fresh scent assaulted my nostrils. The wordblossomappeared out of nowhere in my mind, soft, floral. I wasn’t going to forget it.
I bent my head, kissed her softly on the lips, and paused. Waiting for her eyes to answeryes. And they did. Without a word, I took her hand and guided her two doors down to my room.
As soon as the door closed, I kissed her again.
Her lips were as I imagined, cool, and tart with lemonade. I deepened the kiss to warm them; she parted her mouth in response as her hands rested on my chest. Then she leaned back against the door, holding onto me to stay upright as if the moment knocked her off-center. It had done the same to me.
Our breath filled the quiet of the room—soft, uneven, hot. I wanted to shrug my jacket off.
Then voices burst down the hallway. I drew back.
She looked at me, half startled, half hazy with something that might’ve been panic, or maybe I was just seeing my own.
“I should go,” she said softly. Then she slipped out and closed the door behind her, leaving me with a lingering sense of unfinished business.
Later that night, we won the game.
Kissing Mel as a pregame ritual might be the missing play in my entire damn strategy book. That was the lingering thought as the shuttle headed to the Tahoe West quarters on Sunday. When I got into both the charter and the shuttle, someone had already been sitting by Mel.
We hadn’t spoken since last night’s kiss, not with the game and all that it entailed, and I didn’t know what that kiss meant yet. Only that it felt inevitable, and whatever shifted after my lips touched hers hadn’t shifted back.
The pull I’d been trying to ignore hadn’t let go, and thatnoto the boyfriend question got something in me itching to explore more. The thing was, I didn’t know how she felt about that.
My thoughts cut short as I caught sight of Cassy bouncing on the curb when the bus pulled in at the HQ.
I followed the queue off the bus, peeking at Mel exiting ahead.
“Uncle Sean!” Cassy squealed and bounced over as soon as I got off the bus.
She launched at me and I caught her, adjusting for the full-body hug. “Sweet!” I said, lifting her up. “You’re here.”
“We came!” she beamed. “I wanted to see your ice place.”
I chuckled. “You mean where I work.”
Abby walked up with a sheepish smile. “She’s been asking since we moved. We figured why not surprise you?”
“I love surprises. You took a cab?”
Abby nodded. She’d texted earlier about dinner, and I’d answered with the usual ‘on the road’ and hadn’t given it much thought. But this was better than dinner. Them showingup unannounced, when I hadn’t realized how much I needed Cassy’s bubbling joy.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mel walking away, suitcase rolling behind her. She glanced back briefly at me with a beaming Cassy in my arms and Abby standing beside me, then she turned back and quickened her pace.
