Her heart jumped.
He leaned in, his face closer to hers.
A wind blew, but Annie no longer felt the cold.The ocean hummed beside them, looping as though time were standing still.
She locked eyes with Miles, not daring to say the wrong thing.He was going to kiss her.She could feel it, the way he was looking at her, how close he’d gotten…
He pulled away, laying on his back, his hands behind his head.
“I don’t think Roy is a monster.”His voice was normal again.“I think he’s depressingly average.”
“Depressingly average,” Annie repeated, laying back.
Way to misread the signs.Thankfully he couldn’t see the burning in her cheeks, or the burning in her chest, either.
Man, she was bad at this.It was like she’d only ever kissed one man – because she had.
“I think you’re extraordinary,” he said.
Her mouth ticked up in a half smile.“Thanks.”
“I mean it.I admire you in every way.”He turned his head.“Every way.”
Her heart leapt at the words.She’d told him he was the perfect dad.Somehow, he’d found something even nicer to say about her.
Annie spent the next few days replaying his words over and over.For once, she wasn’t kicking herself for complimenting him.He deserved to hear it, especially considering what he’d said to her.
Admired her ineveryway.Did that mean physically, too?It seemed to affirm that he had almost kissed her.She couldn’t have misread the situationthatbadly.
In that moment, her one wish had quickly turned to two.There were more than enough meteors to support two wishes: first, that her kids got the best father they could have out of Roy.
The second was that Miles would kiss her.
She knew he was not interested in a relationship.She knew he had turned down literally hundreds of women and he was the hottest man on the island – in every way.
It didn’t matter to her.One kiss.It didn’t have to mean anything; he didn’t have to commit to her.She just wanted that feeling to last a moment longer – the way he made her feel.Seen.Worthy.Alive.
In her more crazed moments, she told herself she’d kiss him herself the next chance she had.
Of course, she knew she wouldn’t.
That wish didn’t have much chance of coming true, but her first wish – she could do something about that.
Emboldened by his assessment of Roy, Annie did what she had been avoiding for ages.She typed up an email to Roy about her visit to Seattle.She was polite but firm, telling him she had toured the only daycare available to them (leaving out the potentially embittered comment that he was free to get the kids onto waitlists, too, if he was so eager for them to move), she’d found it unacceptable, and she couldn’t see herself moving the kids anytime in the near future, if at all.She cited the lack of appropriate childcare, the lack of help, and the affordability.
The money was a constant issue for her.She was sick of feeling like a sheepish teenager every time she asked him for money, justifying everything like it was her fault the twins had outgrown all their clothes, or needed to size up in diapers, or simply needed to eat three square meals a day.
In the end, she calculated the twins were with her roughly ninety-six percent of the time, and kept this in the back of her mind when she asked if he could please set up a scheduled money transfer of three hundred dollars a month to help her support them.
She hit send with Miles’ words echoing in her head and his face hovering in her mind’s eye.
Twenty
It was no good.Miles had come dangerously close to kissing Annie.Lying under the stars, watching the meteors burn, their voices hushed against the rolling waves, he’d almost set fire to his life.
It was far too cold outside, and it had allowed them to get far too intimate.What was he thinking?
At least he hadn’t actually done it.He’d managed to stop himself, so that was good, right?
