They tumbled back under the covers, laughing, and it wasn’t long before she drifted off in his arms, dreaming of the two of them floating endlessly in vast, bottomless, crystal-blue water.
20
Merritt was a restless sleeper,which usually led to whoever she was sharing a bed with retreating to their own side and giving her a wide berth. She’d forgotten to give Niko a heads-up before they fell asleep, but to her surprise, when she drifted back into consciousness the next morning, she discovered they were still intertwined—no warning necessary.
It was pitch-black in her room with the blackout curtains closed, the gentle sound of birdsong the only indication that it was morning. They took their time waking up, cuddling and murmuring and dozing on and off until it was almost noon, eventually dragging themselves out of bed to shower and change. Niko headed back to his own house for clean clothes, with a plan to meet back up as soon as they were done.
Olivia and Dev would be back that evening, a fact they were both acutely aware of, even if neither of them mentioned it.
She walked the few blocks into town, stopping first by the grocery store, then the coffee shop, both of which had their power back and were bustling with activity. The storm had left the town fragrant and green, the leaves still quivering with raindrops, and she exited the coffee shop at the exact moment Niko pulled up to the curb, like the uncanny magic lingering in the air—the same magic that had sent him to her door last night—had set the two of them dead in its sights.
She put her overstuffed grocery tote on the floor of the cab and handed him his coffee before hoisting herself onto the bench. He glanced at her, the giddy smile spreading over his face mirroring the feeling expanding in her chest, and the urge to kiss him tugged at her like a riptide. She restrained herself, all too aware of the busy sidewalk next to them.
Getting into Niko’s truck wasn’t so remarkable, but sticking her tongue down his throat definitely would be.
Once they turned onto the gravel road winding up the mountain, they rolled down the windows, cranking Niko’s ABBA CD and singing along at the top of their lungs. Niko didn’t have a bad voice, though she could tell he didn’t use it much—so the fact that he was sitting next to her, belting out “The Winner Takes It All” unselfconsciously off-key, made her feel like they’d reached a level of intimacy even beyond mutual orgasms.
He kept one hand on the wheel, but the other was on her—on her knee, holding her hand, brushing her hair back from her face. She thought about their first time together in his truck, on that drive to Silverton, where she’d wanted him to touch her so badly she’d physically ached for it.
On the heels of that memory, she reached up and ran her fingers down his jawline, rough with stubble, just because she could. He glanced at her, the warmth in his eyes sendinggoosebumps rippling over her, and planted a soft kiss on her palm before returning his gaze to the road.
God, don’t let me fuck this up,she thought—a plea to herself, more than a prayer. If therewasa higher power out there, she would understand if all her calls were being sent straight to voicemail at this point.
They pulled off at a hidden overlook that Merritt hadn’t known existed, a thick bed of wildflowers on either side of the dirt road perfuming the air, the early-afternoon sun making them glow with Technicolor vibrancy.
Niko turned the truck around so it backed up to the view of the town, and as soon as they parked, he was all business, setting up the bed with blankets and pillows. They sprawled there with their iced coffees, unloading the food she’d bought from the tote—sparkling water, crusty bread, cheeses, cured meats, berries, and pastries from the coffee shop.
While they ate, they compared notes about SummerFest, which was only a week away. Since Merritt was judging the pageant, she’d been excluded from the planning, so Niko filled her in on the twelve contestants they’d narrowed it down to and how he had, in fact, built a temporary half-pipe for Elijah’s talent.
Merritt, for her part, had been tasked with creating the catalog for the silent auction, and she’d spent hours hunched over her laptop fumbling her way through a basic website builder, trying not to bother Olivia too much for help.
“What do I have to do to get you to donate some of your paintings?” she coaxed, popping a strawberry into her mouth. He dragged his gaze from her lips back to her eyes.
“Well…I guess I can’t take them all with me,” he said, a little reluctant. “But would you help me pick out which ones?”
A slow smile spread across her face. “I’d love to.”
“Not that one,” he said immediately, and she laughed.
“If you’re so ashamed of it, how’d you even end up painting it in the first place?”
He raised his shoulder in a half shrug, eating a slice of salami to stall answering right away. “I guess it was when everything was already starting to fall apart. I just couldn’t see it yet. But I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, and that’s what she told me. Helene, I mean.” He rubbed his hand across his jaw, not looking at her. “She’d never shown much interest in my art, so I thought…I don’t know. But it turned out that wasn’t why she wanted it. That wasn’t what she was interested in.”
Merritt felt her brows knit together in displeasure.
In a moment of weakness, she’d looked up his ex—more to check out her work than to see what she looked like, though she was curious about that, too. Unfortunately, she was both very pretty and very talented, despite a tendency to post her poetry to Instagram in a fake typewriter font. She’d scrolled back to the posts from around when Helene would’ve been dating Niko, and it was easy to piece together the narrative now that she knew the backstory.
Helene’s poems had described a relationship based around a fiery physical attraction but lacking a deeper connection. No matter how hard he tried, she’d never felt fully understood by him. Merritt had started to skim once the love triangle element had been introduced to her work, but reading them had given her a queasy feeling she couldn’t pin down. Still, other than the attraction part, the Niko that Helene described in her writing didn’t bear much resemblance to the one Merritt knew, so she tried her best to push that feeling away.
“Her loss,” she said simply, and a shy, grateful smile flitted across his face. She was so distracted by the spot of raspberry jamon his lip that she had to lean over and kiss it off him, quickly derailing their conversation.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a flash of pure, uncomplicated happiness. Eventually, they put the food away, and she lay on his chest, his flannel wrapped around her shoulders and a wildflower he’d picked for her behind her ear, as she read to him from her batteredOf Darkness and Destinypaperback. He was a good audience, reacting audibly, laughing and asking questions, but eventually his reactions slowed, as did his breathing, punctuated by the lightest, gentlest snores.
Merritt put the book down and scooted up his body, propping herself on her elbow and gazing down at his sleeping face, those features she’d studied from afar for so long, willing herself to be indifferent to them.
Now, so close that she had to shut one eye to block out the blurry double image, she could admit that it might be the most perfect face she’d ever seen.
“I’m still listening,” he murmured, his eyes closed, the corner of his mouth curling up in a smile. She pressed her lips to that corner.
