“Hey.” He pulled back a fraction. His eyes were dark, searching my face. “Still with me?”
“I’ve been with you since the third grade,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Something shifted in his expression. He kissed me again, slower this time, one hand sliding into my hair. I gripped the front of his shirt in both fists because the floor had gone slightly unreliable, and I preferred the odds with him.
The apartment was nearly empty around us. His sofa, the kitchen table, the lamp in the corner. Almost everything else had made the trip to Grandpa’s weeks ago. It should have felt sparse and strange. Instead, it felt like being alone with him in the way we never quite managed to be anymore. No Grandpa down the hall. No shift ending, no station calling, no squirrel making a nuisance of itself at the worst possible moment. Nothing requiring our immediate attention.
I’d forgotten what that was like.
He walked me back a step, and I went without question, my hands moving from his shirt to his shoulders, learning the shape of him in a way that was entirely new and not new at all. I knew these shoulders. I’d leaned on them through every hard thing. I hadn’t known they’d feel like this under my hands.
“Ellie.”
“Mm.”
“I love you.”
I pulled back enough to look at him properly. His jaw was set, that immovable shape got when he wanted me to hear something and wasn’t going to budge until I did. I’d seen it aimed at other things my entire life. I’d never had it aimed at me. It did considerable damage.
“I know,” I said. “I love you too. I’ve probably loved you for years and been extremely committed to not noticing.”
“Very dedicated.”
“I’m a dedicated person.”
His laugh rolled out low and quiet, and then he bent and scooped me up. I made a sound that was entirely undignified, arms going around his neck.
“Daniel.”
“Mm.”
“Put me down.”
“Absolutely not. I didn’t get to carry you over the threshold. I’ll rectify that later. Right now, we have a different threshold to cross.”
He let the words linger, watching me with those deep, dark eyes.
I stroked his stubbled cheek. “Yes.”
He carried me down the short hall to the bare bedroom, and I pressed my face against his neck and laughed. He was laughing too, and it occurred to me that this was the other thing I hadn’t let myself think about. That it could be like this. That it could be him, and still funny, and still us, and also full of heat and wonder and the newness of discovering each other in a whole other way.
The room held only his bed and the old lamp on the floor beside it. He set me down on the edge of the mattress and stood back. For a moment we looked at each other in the low light, and the laughing quieted.
“We’ve wasted a lot of time,” I said.
“We’re not wasting any more of it.”
His hands found the hem of my shirt, fingers warm against my skin as he tugged it upward. I raised my arms without thinking, and the fabric disappeared over my head. Cool air hit my stomach, my ribs, the swell of my breasts. Then his palms did, rough and calloused from years of gripping hoses and hauling gear. I arched into the touch, desperate for more.
“Off,” I managed, reaching for his shirt in return. The buttons were a nightmare. My fingers fumbled, slipped. A laugh bubbled up my throat.
Daniel’s eyebrows shot up. “Finding this funny?”
“Immensely.” I swatted his hands away and attacked the buttons again. “You’re the one who undresses for a living. Figure it out.”
That earned me a growl, low and promising, before he grabbed the fabric and yanked. Buttons popped, skittering across the floor like tiny, betraying traitors. His chest rose and fell, broad and solid, the chest I’d leaned on a thousand times without ever reallyseeingit. Now I did. Now I traced the dip between his pecs, the ridged planes of his stomach, the scar above his hipbone from that idiotic ATV incident sophomore year.
His breath hitched when my fingers brushed the waistband of his jeans.
