When our breathing steadies, she shifts to lie beside me,her head pillowed on my shoulder, her leg draped over mine. The comfortable silence stretches between us, but I can sense her mind working, processing, analyzing what just happened.
“I can hear you thinking,” I murmur, tracing patterns on her bare shoulder.
She laughs softly. “Occupational hazard.”
“Want to share with the class?”
Propping herself up on one elbow, she studies my face in the dim light. “What are we doing, Lucas?”
It’s the question that’s been hovering between us since last night, since Vegas, maybe since that first meeting eight years ago in a baseball dugout.
“Right now? Enjoying each other,” I say carefully, feeling my way through unfamiliar emotional territory. “Beyond that, I don’t know.”
She nods slowly. “This weekend feels like a bubble. Away from reality, from cameras and contracts and complications.”
“Maybe it can be,” I suggest, the words forming before I’ve fully considered them. “A bubble. A pause from everything else.”
“What do you mean?”
I choose my words carefully, aware of the dangerous ground we’re treading. “Maybe what happens here stays here. No expectations, no complications when we go back to L.A.”
Part of me hopes she’ll argue, that she’ll insist that this is more than a weekend fling, but the rational part knows this is safer for both of us. Our arrangement has clear parameters, adefinite end date. Allowing feelings to complicate things can only lead to pain when those six months are up.
“A weekend pass,” she says thoughtfully, testing the idea.
“Exactly.” I try to ignore the hollow feeling in my chest at her easy acceptance. “We get this out of our systems, then go back to reality, or at least the reality we’ve created.”
She studies me for a long moment, and I wonder if she sees through the lie I’m telling us both. But then she nods, her fingers tracing abstract patterns on my chest.
“Ok,” she agrees. “A weekend bubble.”
I pull her closer, sealing our agreement with a kiss that feels too meaningful for what we’ve just decided. As she nestles against me, warm and trusting, I realize with stark clarity that I’m fooling myself. This isn’t getting her out of my system. It’s letting her sink deeper into my veins.
But for now, the fiction of the bubble protects us both. Tomorrow will come soon enough, with its reality and complications. Tonight, I’ll hold her and pretend that this is all we need, all we want, knowing already that when our time is up, I won’t be ready to let her go.
twenty-seven
. . .
Jess
The California coastlineblurs past the window as Lucas drives us back to Los Angeles. It’s been a quiet drive so far—not awkward silence, exactly, but heavy with everything unsaid between us.
I steal glances at his profile. His jaw is set, his eyes are focused on the road, and one hand rests casually on the steering wheel. This weekend changed things. There’s no going back from this, and now we’re returning to our fabricated reality with no roadmap for what comes next.
Los Angeles materializes around us, a familiar sprawl of perpetual sunshine and the rhythm of a city that never fully sleeps. By the time we pull into the parking garage beneath Lucas’s building, the tension between us is thick enough to touch.
In the elevator, we stand on opposite sides, our overnight bags between us like some kind of barrier—five floors of charged silence that crackles with possibility and uncertainty.
Inside the apartment, Lucas drops his keys in the bowl Ipurchased for him. Setting my overnight bag by the door, I take in the familiar space. It somehow feels different now, less like Lucas’s apartment and more like somewhere I belong.
“Hungry?” he asks as he shrugs off his jacket. “I could make us something.”
“Sure,” I reply, watching him move toward the kitchen, my eyes lingering on the broad lines of his shoulders. “I need a shower first. That drive back was longer than I remembered.”
He nods, opening the refrigerator. “Take your time. I’ll start dinner.”
As I head toward the bathroom, my mind races with possibilities. What I really want to do is turn around, grab his hand, and lead him straight into that shower with me. My body craves his touch like it’s become essential, and the thought of his hands on me again sends waves of anticipation through my core.
