“Oh, Niko…”
His profile had two pictures, no text. The first was a low-angle selfie clearly taken in the front seat of his truck. The second seemed older, ten years if she had to guess, his eyes glowing red like he’d been possessed—but it was hard to tell, since it was so blurry, and he was so far away. At least it was candid: outside at a party, backward baseball cap on his head, beer in hand, looking off to the side like someone had just called his name, his mouth open in mid-sentence.
Even though it was impossible to camouflage his baseline hotness, nothing about either of these photos was doing him any favors—not to mention the blank profile, revealing no trace of the personality she’d delighted in uncovering, layer by layer.
“What?” he asked, hovering over her shoulder, his tone threaded with self-consciousness. “Is it that bad? All my good pictures were taken by exes, or with them. It felt weird to use them.”
Merritt shut the screen off and handed it back to him, laughing as she leaned in to twine her arms around his neck. “I changed my mind. I actually don’t want to help you with this. It works better for me if everyone thinks you’re an extremely low-effort catfish. I’m just surprised you don’t have a mirror selfie of your abs on there.”
His arms wrapped around her waist, leaning her back until she was lying flat against the pillows, his heat and weight settling over her. “Gotta save some surprises for the first date,” he murmured into her mouth.
“The first date? You slut.” She punctuated this by gently pulling his bottom lip between her teeth.
“That’s just when I show them the painting. Worked on you.”
Once the sun slipped low enough in the sky for them to no longer be able to cuddle away the cold, they disassembled their makeshift bed, shaking the circulation back into their limbs.
On the drive back, she glanced over at him. “Olivia and Dev are coming back tonight.”
He nodded, his eyes fixed on the road, but she could see the tension in his neck. “Do you need to pick them up?”
“No, they parked at the airport.”
At a stop sign, he finally met her eyes. “Are you going to tell them?”
Merritt rolled her bottom lip between her teeth.
Obviously, keeping secrets only led to things blowing up later. But at the same time, as soon as Olivia knew, the two of them would be under a microscope, everyone’s breath held, waiting for Merritt to screw up. She couldn’t bear to face that yet—not when things with her and Niko felt so delicate and fresh, so easily crushed. Inviting that cloud of disapproval to hover over them seemed the fastest way to ensure that they would never have another day as perfect as this one.
Plus,the darkest, pettiest part of her whispered,she didn’t even tell you they were trying to have a baby.
“I think we should wait to tell anyone,” she said at last. “At least until…until it’s not so new. We don’t need everyone’s opinions. And youknoweveryone will have one.”
He was silent for a moment, and she felt a stab of remorse. Was it unfair of her to ask him to do this, when his last relationship had been a secret, too?
“Okay,” he said. “But I think Jo and Simon already know something is going on, since I told them I was going over to your house for fifteen minutes and then didn’t come back all night.”
Merritt fought back a smile. “Can you ask them to not spread it around?”
He nodded without looking at her. Even once they pulled up to the house, he was still facing straight ahead, his eyes downcast.
“Hey,” she said softly, and he turned to her, his expression unreadable. She leaned in, sliding her hand up his jaw and into his hair, kissing him slowly, with purpose. He kissed her back but didn’t push it further. “Thank you for today,” she murmured when she pulled away, their foreheads still pressed together. “And last night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He nodded again, slightly dazed from the kiss, and he looked so cute she had to press one more to his lips for good measure.
Luckily, the power had come back on by the time she let herself back into the house, and when Olivia and Dev dropped their bags in the foyer with matching exhausted sighs a few hours later, she had already cleaned out the fridge, made another trip to the grocery store, and had a vegetarian lasagna cooling on the stove.
They loaded their plates and ate in the living room, Olivia and Dev filling her in on the wedding—one of Olivia’s college friends—the highlight of which was the DJ accidentally swapping the “must play” and “do not play” lists, subjecting them to “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” “Sexy and I Know It,” and “Y.M.C.A.” before someone alerted him to his mistake.
“Sounds like we missed an exciting time here, though,” Olivia said, after Merritt had stopped laughing long enough to tell them about the storm, conveniently excluding any mention of Niko’s role in coming to her rescue.
“Mmm,” said Merritt, swallowing her last bite of lasagna into a stomach suddenly tight with guilt, “you really didn’t miss much.”
21
Niko didn’t know what thefuck to do with himself for the rest of the night. Simon was watching TV in the living room when he got home, but Niko wasn’t ready to talk, so he shut himself away in the garage, lifting weights and blasting music until the turmoil in his brain calmed down a little bit.
In the shower, though, it was just him and his thoughts, somehow even more jumbled than after the first time he’d kissed her.
