CHAPTER 16
Logan
Idon’t want this night to end.
The thought keeps circling through my mind as I pull up to Audrey’s apartment building, the engine idling in the quiet street. The planetarium was everything I’d hoped it would be—her tears, her laughter, her hand in mine as we traveled through the universe together. And dinner afterward, at the little tapas place she loves, had been even better. Two hours of conversation that felt like twenty minutes. Her foot brushing against mine under the table. The way she’d stolen bites of my croqueta and laughed when I pretended to be offended.
Now we’re here, and I’m gripping the steering wheel like it’s the only thing keeping me tethered to reality.
“I had a really good time tonight,” Audrey says, and there’s something in her voice—a softness, an invitation—that makes my pulse kick up.
“Me too.” I turn to look at her. In the glow of the streetlights, she’s beautiful. She’s always beautiful, but tonight there’s something different. Something open and hopeful that makes my chest ache. “Best first date I’ve ever had.”
She laughs. “It’s your only first date.”
“Still counts.”
We sit there for a moment, neither of us moving. I should walk her to her door. That’s what you do at the end of a date, right? But if I walk her to her door, then I have to say goodnight. And if I say goodnight, the evening ends. And I’m not ready for that.
But I also don’t want to seem presumptuous. Like I’m expecting something. Like I’m assuming that just because we’ve been kissing for two weeks, she wants?—
“Aren’t you going to walk me up?”
I blink. “What?”
Audrey is already unbuckling her seatbelt, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips. “To my apartment. Aren’t you going to walk me up? It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”
“Right. Yes. Of course.” I cut the engine, fumbling with my seatbelt and nearly strangling myself in the process. “I was just—I didn’t want to assume?—”
“Logan.” She reaches over and stills my hands. “Come upstairs with me.”
So I do.
The elevator ride is silent. She stands close enough that I can smell her perfume. My hand finds hers. Her thumb traces circles on my palm, and I forget how to breathe. When the doors open on her floor, I follow her down the hallway, hyperaware of every step, every breath, every inch of space between us.
She stops at her door, keys in hand, and turns to face me.
“Thank you,” she says. “For tonight. For all of it. The planetarium, the flowers, the—” She shakes her head, smiling. “You’re kind of amazing, you know that?”
“I’m really not.”
“You really are.” She steps closer, and suddenly we’re right there again—inches apart, the air between us electric. “Kiss me goodnight?”
I don’t need to be asked twice.
The kiss starts soft. A proper end-of-date kiss, the kind you give someone on their doorstep before saying goodbye.
Then her hands slide up my chest, fingers curling into my sweater, and something shifts.
The kiss deepens. Her back presses against her door. My hands find her waist, pulling her closer, and she makes a sound against my mouth that short-circuits every rational thought in my brain.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“Logan,” she whispers, and her voice is rough in a way I’ve never heard before. “I want you to come inside.”
I freeze.
Not because I don’t want to. God, I want to—I’ve been wanting to for months, years maybe, in some half-formed way I didn’t have words for until I met her in the flesh. But wanting and doing are different things, and the gap between them feels like a chasm.
