He blinks. “Yes. Definitely.”
I laugh, and finally my nerves stop ping-ponging. It’s ridiculous how grounding his voice is. I’ve dated men who only used me to pass time or deliver lines to get in my pants, but everything with Miles is always conversation first. My hands stop shaking, and the drone glides instead of lurching.
“See? You’ve got it.”
“Don’t get too optimistic,” I tease. “I still have the controller, and there are trees about a hundred feet away.”
We spend the next thirty minutes trading turns, flying lazy loops over the field until the battery finally gives out. By the time the sun slips behind the trees, my cheeks ache from smiling, and my heart feels lighter than it has in a long time. We sit in the open back of his SUV, legs dangling, watching the sky fade into gold and lavender.
“This part never gets old,” Miles says quietly.
“The flying?”
“The stillness after.” I glance at him and realize he isn’t watching the sky. He’s watching me. The awareness settles all at once: how much I enjoy this. Being with Miles. I’ve spent so long chasing sparks that I forgot how good warmth feels. A breeze skims across the field, and I shiver.
“You cold?” he asks.
“Just a little.”
He shifts closer and drapes an arm around my shoulders. We sit like that until the sun finally slips away. A peacefulness settles over the field and between us. If this were all we ever did—fly drones, watch sunsets while fireflies flicker through the tall grass—I’d be… happy. The word is almost unfamiliar. It’s been missing from my vocabulary for longer than I want to admit. I peer up at him; a faint dusting of stubble covers his jaw as if he’d been too excited about today to shave. He looks down at me, and our eyes catch. His gaze drifts to my lips, then back again. For a second, I think he’s going to kiss me. Instead, he presses his lips to my forehead.
“I’m hungry,” he whispers.
I pull back, narrowing my eyes playfully. “What kind of hungry?”
He blinks. “Food hungry.”
A laugh bubbles out of me. “Good. Because any other answer would’ve changed the tone.”
And dammit, I kind of want it to be me he’s hungry for.
He grins. “Come over for dinner? I’ll cook.”
“I get to watch you cook?”
“I’m more than just a drone pilot.”
“Prove it.”
Garlic and butter take over his kitchen within minutes. I hop up onto the counter and steal a piece of pesto-coated bowtie pasta.
“You’re supposed to wait until it’s plated.” He stirs a pan of bite-size pieces of chicken on the stove.
“I’m doing quality control.” He eyes me from over his shoulder, flashing me his lazy half smile. Butterflies erupt in my belly. It shouldn’t be this easy with Miles, but it is, and I don’t know what to do with it.
He turns off the stove, sets the spoon on a spoon rest, and turns to face me. “Would you like more wine?” I nod and hold out my glass. He fills it halfway before doing the same to his. “Did you know the word pesto comes from the Italian pestare, which means to crush or pound?”
I wouldn’t mind if he pestare into me.
I steal another piece of pasta, mostly to keep my inside thoughts from becoming outside ones. “Did you just… casually read a book on Italian food origins?”
“No. When I cook with something, I research it first.”
I shake my head, smiling. “You are genuinely one of a kind. How did you get so smart? You know things. Remember things. And pull facts out of thin air like a magician with rabbits.”
He stares at the ceiling for a second, then at me, glasses slightly askew. “When I was a kid, I didn’t have many friends. So I read. Everything. Science books. Flight manuals. Atlases. Whatever I could get my hands on.” He smiles, a little shy. “Turns out I just… remember it.”
“Like a photographic memory?”
