He nods, then starts firing them off fast. "Fact: you've never once been home by nine in your life if you didn't want tobe. Fact: you break rules to feel alive. Fact—" his gaze flicks to my mouth, "—you like me saying all this."
"That's not a fact," I snap.
His mouth curves. "It's the truest one."
I shake my head and make an annoyed sound. Turn around and watch the seagulls, tasting the salt on my tongue.
We've been on the road for an hour. "Where are we even going? Or are you just driving until the tank runs dry?"
Not that I'd mind if he was.
"You need a tan," he declares, as if that was the whole point of this little abduction.
"You know my skin's dramatic. Peels. Blisters. I'll regret it in an hour," I half-protest even though every cell of me begs for the sun to melt the frostbite from my computer screen. Six months cooped up—it's showing.
"Yeah, yeah," he says flatly, and leans forward, arm grazing my knee—casually, not casually—before he pops open the glove compartment.
A bottle arcs into my lap.
"SPF 50. Got it just for Miss Dramatic."
I smirk, and pretend something in me didn't just loosen up. Because this is who he's always been—the guy who pays attention, even when he pretends he doesn't.
9
We're sitting on a blanket across a flat ledge of rock, sand cradled in its cracks, like the ocean once flirted with this place and then got cold feet. The waves below crash slowly and steadily, pounding the rocks below.
No one around. Just us and a couple of houses in the distance that seem more like watercolor than real.
Ben's come well-prepared—strawberries, my favorite salty crackers and two thermoses of coffee.
When I saw my decaf had a pink alien sticker, I couldn't stop grinning.
I'm not overthinking it because he hands it to me like it's nothing, just a friendly gesture like back in the day, but it's a lot of gestures, no?
Anyway...
Heels? Total disaster.
We ditched the car up the hill to hike down, and halfway through, I had to kick them off, praying my ankle would survive without proper traction, which means I'm now massaging blisters the size of little pillows.
"Told you I'd carry you," Ben says, eyeing my bare feet and shaking his head at my stubbornness.
"It's fine. Your arms were full."
Him carrying me barefoot down a hill to a secret beach that looks like a romantic movie set? Yeah, not exactly something I'dsurvive emotionally intact, or with plausible deniability.
I dig through his bag for the sunscreen. "How do you like being back in San Francisco?"
"It's alright. Some good memories. Some bad." He glances at me, eyes implying he means me in both. "How do you like being back here?"
"Some good memories. Some bad," I say, and his lips curl into a crooked smirk at my tacit answer.
"Didn't you miss the weather?" I ask, coating my arms.
He shrugs off his jacket and raises his arms, cracking his back in one smooth motion. "I'm a New York boy. I like the proper fall in Central Park. Clouds. Rain. Thick hoodies."
"You're hot anyway," I say, then catch myself sounding like an idiot. "I mean, your body temperature. You always run on tropical."
