Today, she opened the door before I knocked, like she’d been waiting on the other side.
“You’re early,” she said.
I held up the takeout bag. “You say that like you weren’t standing there counting my footsteps.”
“I was not counting your footsteps.”
“You opened the door before I knocked.”
“Because you stomp arrogantly in hallways.”
“That’s a new one.”
“You inspire creativity.”
She stepped back to let me in, and I immediately regretted the entire concept of self-control.
Bliss wore a cropped Tigers sweatshirt that slipped off one shoulder, denim shorts, and white socks with tiny red hearts on them. Her blonde hair was down in loose waves, softer today than usual, and the sight of her standing barefoot in her apartment doorway, smelling like vanilla coffee and warm sugar, hit somewhere low and inconvenient.
I walked inside before I did something stupid, like stare.
“You brought tacos?” she asked, shutting the door behind me.
“Chinese last week. Tacos today. I’m diversifying.”
“You cannot keep feeding me before my dad’s dinner.”
“I’ve seen what your dad does to meat.”
“That’s my father.”
“That’s a grill crime scene.”
She pressed her lips together like she was trying not to smile. “You’re getting too comfortable.”
“Probably.”
“Careful, Cross Check.”
There it was again.
The name still hit me the same way it had the first time she said it. Like she’d reached into my life, grabbed something sharp, and made it hers with a smile. Everybody else called me Mercer like it meant something. Like captain, money, hockey, expectation, trouble. Bliss called me Cross Check like she had decided the worst thing about me was also funny enough to keep.
I liked it too much.
Dangerous, considering I was already deep enough in this thing to know her taco order and pretend that wasn’t insane.
She moved past me toward the kitchen, and I followed because apparently I had become the kind of man who carriedtakeout and potatoes through a girl’s apartment every Sunday like domesticity hadn’t once sounded like a punishment.
Her coffee table was already covered in project notes, her laptop, a half-dead highlighter, and the little black tote bag she always brought to her father’s. A marble sat beside it, catching sunlight in a bright wink of glass.
Not the moth one.
This one was green and gold, with something tiny trapped inside it. A pressed flower, maybe. Or a leaf.
I set the tacos on the counter. “New one?”
Bliss looked over her shoulder. “New what?”
