The parking lot is empty except for us, snowflakes drifting lazily through the halos of the streetlights. My breath clouds in the cold air.
“We do,” I agree. “We almost exposed ourselves back there, though. Close call with your parents, too.”
“But we didn’t. We pulled it off.” He sets down his box, closes the cover over the bed of his truck, and turns to me. The corners of his mouth twitch with amusement.
Meanwhile, I can’t help but take this seriously. “Your teammates seem to think you’ve been pining for me since college.”
Fletch rubs the back of his neck, a gesture I’ve come to recognize as nervousness. “Yeah, about that ...”
“You told them about me? Before this arrangement?”
“Not exactly. I may have mentioned a girl from college I always regretted not asking out. And I may have said a few times that I told her I’d marry her and it kind of became a joke, but?—”
The confession hangs between us in the frigid air. Disbelief forms a wall of ice between what he’s saying and what it would mean.
“And they think that’s me?”
“It is you.” His gaze catches mine, holding steady. Sending a ripple of what feels like warm caramel through me and I fear I might melt on the spot.
“You never asked me out in college.”
“I wanted to. I meant to. But then you were dating that English major guy, and after that, I got drafted to the league, and life happened.”
“So all those jokes about marrying me someday ...” Deep down, past the unnecessary obstacles, objections, and self-sabotage I’ve done to create a safe distance between my heart and ameaningful relationship, I know what I want to hear but am so afraid of what he might say instead.
“Not entirely jokes. Sure, it was a fleeting college crush. I was such a dope back then. I know it came across as arrogant, but there was something about you. The way you weren’t tripping all over yourself for me, how brilliant you were. I just ... never had the courage to actually ask you out properly.”
“All this time, I thought it was just a prank that followed me around campus.” I take a step closer to him, frozen slush crunching beneath my boots. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Would it have made a difference? This arrangement has a deadline. Just over another week, and you’ll have completed your research.” His voice is low, uncertain.
I shift from foot to foot. “But I still have so many chapters to write. What if I don’t want—?” I fall silent.
Put me in front of a keyboard and I can create narratives where the characters speak the same love language, where they confess their feelings, and share affection. But in real life, I can’t seem to find the words.
But Fletch must read me, read between the lines of everything I’m not saying, because he goes very still, his eyes darkening. Then he steps forward, closing the remaining distance between us, his hands cradling my face with a tenderness that makes my heart hiccup.
When he kisses me now, it’s different from our kiss at the pond. That was a beginning, a question. This is an answer. Deep and sure and full of promise.
I melt into him, arms wrapping around his neck, the cold forgotten as heat blooms between us.
His lips move against mine with a longing that matches my own, and I realize I’ve been wanting this—with him—even though I’ve tried to convince myself otherwise.
But my heart knows the truth and the way I return the kiss makes me hope that he feels it even if I can’t yet say it.
His fingers thread gently into my hair, and I sigh against his mouth, allowing myself to give in to this moment completely. There’s a rightness to being in his arms that I’ve never felt before, like finding the missing piece of a puzzle I didn’t know I was solving. A section of a chapter or character quirk I didn’t realize was missing.
When his lips brush across my cheek to press softly against my temple, tears gather in the corners of my eyes—not from sadness, but from an overwhelming sense of coming home. The tenderness in his touch tells me more than words ever could.
“I’ve been wanting to do this more often,” he whispers against my ear, his voice husky.
His breath is warm against my skin, making me shiver despite the heat between us.
I pull back just enough to look into his cocoa-brown eyes, finding them heavy, trained on me, as if he very much likes what he sees.
Me.
“Why haven’t we—you know, again?” I ask, my fingers tracing the strong line of his jaw.
