I huff, surprised. “You were for real about that? I figured you were just trying to distract me during my heat.”
His hands still on the keys. In the sudden silence, I can hear my own heartbeat, rapid and uncertain.
“Read the script,” he says quietly. “That’s all I’m asking.”
“Why does it matter so much to you?”
His arms tighten around me, a brief squeeze. “Because that role was written for someone exactly like you and you deserve to be taken seriously. I want the world to see you the way I do.”
I lean further back against his chest, letting my weight settle into him. His heart beats steady against my spine. His breath is warm against my hair.
A warm and terrifying feeling blooms in my chest. “Yeah, okay. I will.”
Atticus smiles against the skin of my neck as he resumes playing.”Good girl.”
The shiver that runs through me this time has nothing to do with the chill in the air.
THIRTY-THREE
PHOENIX
The rideshare driverhas not stopped talking about lobster for seventeen consecutive minutes.
I’m not exaggerating. I’ve been counting. First it was the history of the Harmony Harbor Lobster Festival (established 1947, interrupted only once during a particularly brutal nor’easter in 1978). Then it was the politics of lobster trap placement and the blood feuds between rival fishing families. Now we’re apparently learning about the optimal water temperature for lobster molting, which is apparently a thing lobsters do, and which apparently matters very much to people in this town.
“—and then you’ve got your soft-shell season, which is a whole other ballgame,” the driver continues, gesturing expansively with one hand while the other steers us around a pothole the size of a small meteor crater. “Tourists don’t understand, see. They come up here expecting hard-shell all year round, and then they get mad when the meat’s sweeter but there’s less of it?—“
I murmur something that might be acknowledgment. In the back seat beside me, Mason sits utterly motionless.
He’s done himself up like a character in a witness protection program fever dream. Oversized sunglasses that swallow half his face. A baseball cap pulled so low the brim practically touches his nose. A scarf wrapped around his neck at least three times, covering the galaxy of hickeys that I know for a fact are blooming across his throat and jaw.
Because I was there when most of them happened.
The thought sends a complicated flutter through my chest that I ruthlessly suppress.
Mason hasn’t said a word since we climbed into the car. His posture screamsleave me aloneso loudly that even the lobster-obsessed driver has unconsciously angled his commentary toward Atticus in the front passenger seat. Every few minutes, Mason shifts slightly to adjust his scarf, otherwise there is no other evidence he isn’t asleep behind those blackout lenses.
He’s trying so hard to seem fine.
I want to reach over and take his hand. And I desperately want to tell him it’s okay, that whatever he’s feeling right now is valid, that the world didn’t actually end just because he spent three days in heat with his estranged bondmate and his employer-slash-whatever-I-am-now.
But I also know Mason well enough to recognize when he needs space. Pushing now will only make him retreat further into that shell of professionalism he’s been wearing like armor for years.
So I keep my hands folded in my lap and stare out the window at the passing scenery—clapboard houses, weathered fences, the occasional glimpse of gray ocean between the trees—and let him pretend he’s invisible.
“—which is why the festival timing is so crucial,” the driver continues, seemingly oblivious to the complete lack of engagement from his passengers. “You want to hit that sweetspot right after the summer season but before the water gets too cold. Late September, early October. Peak flavor profile.”
“Fascinating,” Atticus says from the front seat, and his voice is warm enough that I can’t tell if he’s being genuine or just very politely sarcastic.
I catch his eye in the rearview mirror. A quick flash of green, crinkling slightly at the corners. He tilts his head almost imperceptibly toward Mason, then raises an eyebrow in silent question.
He okay?
I give the smallest possible shrug.No idea.
His gaze holds mine for another beat before returning to the road ahead. Even that brief interaction settles me a bit. Though I can’t quite believe that rockstar playboy Atticus Sloan has become the steady, comforting presence in my life while Mason falls apart.
Maybe we did all die in that plane crash and this is some dreamy afterlife.
