“Don’t I? I think I know a little, Cossette.”
“You think you’re my type?”
“I think if we had the chance to do it all over again, then yes.”
She rolled her eyes. “Optimistic of you.”
“You’re still angry about the passport. I didn’t think I had to explain it to you, of all people.”
“I didn’t ask for an explanation.”
“I know. Because we’re a good pair, Syd. You and I.”
There was an inflection in his tone that made Syd’s heart twist a little, reminded her of why she’d kissed him on that snowy day in the hotel, why she’d let him take her to bed. “We were never a pair, Tems.”
The stadium darkened, and down on the stage, the rabbit logo illuminated, sending the mass of fans into an explosion of cheers that shook the floor.
Above the noise, Sydney heard Tems utter a low laugh. “Give me a call when you’re done with your new boy, Syd.”
Sydney’s temper flared, and she was about to retort, but the static in her earpiece cut off abruptly, signaling his departure.
Down on the stage, the first deep beats of Winter’s intro music came on. Sydney recognized it immediately as the opening single from his new album. She listened as everyone else around her cheered and clapped, murmuring in admiration as the staged shifted and changed with the music, as if it were made up of massive tectonic plates.
Then Winter appeared on the stage. The entire stadium came alive with wild cheering—even the ministers around her in the box all turned to clap, their attention riveted on nothing but the boy in a silken black suit studded with diamonds.
Winter didn’t look up in their direction. He kept his focus on the broader stadium, his face bright with energy, his voice filling the air as his dancers spread out to fill the rest of the stage. As he went, her gaze followed the ripples of motion in the audience standing nearest him. They moved like water, their hands reaching up for him whenever he passed by. And even though Sydney was here to track suspicious activity among the crowd, she couldn’t help going back to Winter over and over again. The diamonds on his suit caught the sweeping spotlights and turned him blindingly bright.
And his voice. His voice was effortlessly clear and powerful, filling the entire space, reverberating in her chest, making tears well unexpectedly in her eyes.
Her jaw clenched. No, Gavi couldn’t have caught on to any attraction she had for Winter, because they were done. She could still her heart around Winter. She could treat him exactly the way she was supposed to treat him: as a professional partner. Nothing more, nothing less.
She thought of Niall’s words over breakfast, the tragic, faraway look in his eyes when he spoke of family, of love and mistakes.
Winter blew through two more of his biggest hits before the upbeat tempo calmed into something deep and melancholy. The lights on the stage changed, and Winter’s backup dancers filed away, leaving Winter seated on a lone stool, a guitar propped on his leg. The audience cheered, then stilled in anticipation.
It wasn’t until he began singing that Sydney recognized, with a start, the song he was performing.
And this hurricane goes on and on
Every time I look at you
You are my meditation
Am I ever yours, too?
It was the one he’d never released, the song he had been writing in London when they were on their first mission together, the song they’d opened up about last night.
It was the song he’d written about her.
It was one thing to read the lyrics scrawled on paper, one thing to listen as he admitted that it’d been about her—and quite another to hear it here, in a performance watched by millions, the words brought to life by an acoustic guitar and his velvet voice, which had transformed from its earlier power into something vulnerable and exquisite.
No. Goddamn it, Winter.Terror seized her—she looked quickly away from him, but not before it brought back a surge of everything that had happened during their previous mission. The fear she’d felt for him when she’d arrived back at their empty London apartment. The lump in her throat when he’d told her that this song was about her. The feeling of him lifting her into his arms and carrying her into the pool, of his lips on hers and her arms around his neck and legs straddling him in the water, the searing heat of his skin.
She thought of the words they’d exchanged before they parted ways, of how he’d leaned his head against hers and closed his eyes.
A little like the sun and the moon, aren’t we? Never in the sky at the same time.
But sometimes the sun and the moon were visible together. Sometimestheywere. And sometimes she couldn’t hold her breath any longer around him, couldn’t deny that she felt pulled to him in every way, that here, she felt like everything around her was spiraling out of her control.
