“It is,” she says, and her smile tells me she knows it isn’t, not really, but she’ll say it until I believe it.
After dishes, we refill our glasses and carry them out back. The patio’s enclosed with screens and a string of retro café bulbs I found in a moving box. The new couch is deep and squishy, the throw blanket still has crease marks. I stack kindling in the outdoor fireplace and coax a flame until it catches, low and steady. It’s comforting and romantic.
Penny kicks off her shoes, tucks her legs under her, and pulls the blanket over her feet. The cool air is perfect. “You did good, you know,” she says. “Today. The signing.”
“I felt like I was teetering on a cliff’s edge the entire time.”
“But you didn’t jump. You flew.”
I settle beside her, shoulder to shoulder, the warmth of the fire a slow creep across my jeans. “Derek says there were three different Facebook threads by the time we hit the county line. Someone posted a photo from Raleigh. He’s panicking about tomorrow’s official rollout. Sayswe’re either about to go big or go home.”
“Maybe both,” she says, smiling into her glass. “Go big, then go home with me.”
“I like that plan.”
We fall quiet and her head tips to rest on my shoulder. I don’t know that anything has ever felt this right.
“This evening is absolutely perfect,” she muses, echoing my inner thoughts. “I don’t understand how you and I’ve known each other practically our entire lives, but we’ve never really connected before.”
I don’t lift a shoulder for fear of dislodging her weight. “I don’t know, but what I do understand is that I make a living from writing about connection in a fictional setting. But this is the first time it’s felt… real.” I turn my head, appreciate that she is basked in the glow of firelight.
Color blooms on her cheeks. “Really?”
“With you,” I say, “it feels more real than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
We look at each other, the kind of connection that shifts the ground under your feet. Then her fingers slide over, find the edge of my sleeve, tug lightly like she’s checking I’m not going anywhere.
I set my glass down, take hers from her hand, and set it beside mine. “C’mere.”
The first kiss is slow, simple, a press that says we have time. She tastes like crisp wine and I want to devourevery bit of her. My hand finds the curve of her waist and hers squeezes my shoulder before sliding up to the nape of my neck. The world pulls back, leaving the snap-pop of the fire and the hush of night.
We break just enough to breathe.
“Hi,” she whispers.
“Hi,” I whisper back, and then we’re closer again, angled toward each other, and the kiss deepens. The couch creaks when we shift. The blanket slides, her soft laugh tickles against my mouth, and I feel it like a flame catching in my chest.
The world falls away and right here, it’s the soft glide of her palm against my jaw, the heat rolling off the fire, the kind of connection I write about but never thought I’d feel.
For now, life can spin without me. The signs can wave, the fans can clamor, Derek can hide behind Ficus plants and plan a thousand contingencies.
Right here, this is the only part of my life that I’m sure of.
CHAPTER 16
Penny
The fabric ofSam’s T-shirt is bunched in my fists and I don’t want this kiss to break. I mean… who needs oxygen anyway?
Every kiss pulls me closer until sitting beside him isn’t nearly close enough. I shift, angling toward him, my hand sliding up the back of his neck.
“Penny…,” he warns, that rough edge in his voice giving me shivers. He’s thinking the same as me. This feels like it’s getting ready to become very dangerous between us.
“Stop thinking,” I whisper against his mouth. “Just feel.”
“Oh, I’m feeling, all right,” he mutters before his mouth captures mine again in a bruising kiss.
I accept everything he’s giving, because he’s so thoroughly invested in kissing me senseless and I swing a leg over his lap so I’m straddling him, putting us face-to-face. Sam groans, his hands catching me at my hips likehe means to stop me. For one long heartbeat, he holds me there, breathing hard, caught somewhere betweendon’tandplease. Then his grip shifts from resistance to permission, palms flattening against my waist, and he leans back just enough to make room for me.
