“No. Talk some sense into her when you take her out,” she says with a wink.
“What—”
“She’d have to say yes to a date first,” Nick replies, his eyes on me again.
Jasmine and Danielle both look at me, brows lifted, and my heartbeat begins to pound as I glance between them and Nick. “What? I’m not talking about this in front of you two. Go away. Andyou, you’re a distraction.”
Nick chuckles as he grabs the North sculpture. “When do you need these back by?” he asks us.
“Any chance you could do three days?” Danielle asks.
He nods and lifts the Blaze sculpture under his other arm. “Yeah, no worries. I have another job to finish this afternoon and can start on them tomorrow.”
Jasmine lifts an empty dish rack to take to the back. “Thanks, Nick!” she says, turning to go back into the kitchen.
“Just text me and let me know how much we owe you,” Danielle says.
“Will do.” Nick pauses and considers me once more, and I shift under his gaze, breath catching in my throat. He slowly begins walking backward, somehow surefooted as he moves around the chair I had been standing in earlier.
“Think about it,” he says.
“About what?”
“Where you want to go on our date.”
My first instinct is to argue and tell him I never agreed to one, but a small, sad part of me is sure of one of two things: either I’ll never see him again, or he’ll have forgotten about it by the time he brings those sculptures back.
“Okay.”
Chapter 3
Blaze
Juniper’s dark brown eyes stay on me as I walk backward all the way to the door. I can’t help it. She’s too entrancing not to stare at. Her dark green waves fall across her face when she pretends to get back to work.
The soft, nervous smile on her lips assuages a stirring within me that hasn’t felt relief in centuries.
I haven’t stopped thinking about her since yesterday morning—when I followed her to the jetty for the first time and watched her scream into the void at sunrise.
She’d unleashed a blood-curdling shout, one that sounded like it burned her throat and shattered the souls of those she meant to curse. The crashing waves had drowned it out, and I knew it was genuine. She’d screamed not for help, but for relief. As if it was the only thing standing between her and a worse fate.
It was the same this morning.
I’d stood beside her both days as she collected herself, invisible in her shadow, and yet completely enamored by the glisten in her eyes.
I wonder why she’s angry.
After so many years coming to this island around Christmas, I don’t know how I’ve missed her. I’m wracking my brain tryingto figure out if I’ve just been going through the motions the last few decades, fumbling the fun my brother and I once had toying with the locals.
Because how have I missedher?
I memorize the look on her face before finally turn my back on her. It won’t be two days before I see her again. I might have a job to finish this afternoon, but I’ll be back to walk her home—even if it’s undetectable in her wake, melting any icy dew on the sidewalk to make sure she doesn’t slip.
Even if it would be smarter to leave her alone.
I carry the sculptures to the car I’m using, set them one-by-one in the trunk, and pause to stare. I’ve seen these before. A long,longtime ago. I remember the sculptor and the precision he went into making them after North purposefully left one of his drawings behind at an early Rumpus Festival.
They really do need painting.
