“Nope.”
Their laughter trails us out the door.
forty-four
INDIGO
“Areyou sure you need to work today?” Sebastian wraps his arms around my middle and pulls me tight against his body. The scent of coffee and bacon still fills the kitchen, even though we finished eating half an hour ago. It’s an overwhelming feast for my senses when the savory scents of breakfast combine with the spicy scent of his cologne and the heat of his chest against my back.
“Sorry. I’m on a deadline. I’m in good shape, but I want to make sure I don’t get behind. And with you guys being in the finals, there’s a lot going on that I want to be able to enjoy.”
“Fine.” He kisses my shoulder over my T-shirt. “So responsible, my girlfriend. It’s sexy.”
A bright laugh bubbles out of me. I’m all lightness and contentment this morning. It goes against every instinct to leave Bash, but I really do need to be a responsible adult. Especially since the publishers and I finally have a plan in place to officially reveal my identity. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. And with game two tonight, it’s not like I can write later.
“Come on, then, Violet Quinn. Let’s get you to your laptop.” With a wink, Bash takes my hand and leads me out to the garage and his car. “You know you can bring your computer and write here if you want.”
“Thanks. I know. But somehow, I don’t think I’ll get much work done with you in the house.”
“Are you saying I’m distracting?” He arches one dark eyebrow at me as he opens the car door. Of course, he’s distracting. Every golden inch of him is perfection. Each time he touches me, it drives me to distraction. I want to spend every single moment with him. I want to hear every story I missed over the last ten years.
As much as I love writing—and I do, more than almost anything else—there are a few things I will always love more. And he’s one of them.
“Obviously,” I say, rolling my eyes as I climb into his SUV. “But I mean that as a compliment.”
His laughter rolls through me, and even though I’m a bit sore from everything we did last night, my body still heats for him. It always has, and with every day we spend together, I respond to him more and more. “Thanks, Rosebud.”
I can’t stop staring at him as he drives me to my little rental. The morning sun shines golden and adoring on his skin, making it glow. His raven eyelashes fan over high cheekbones, casting fleeting shadows that, when they part, reveal faceted, amber-flecked earthen irises.
Every so often, I’ll blink and get flashes of the boy he was at fourteen, then fifteen. He chuckles, and I hear the sixteen-year-old that laughed himself hoarse after he threw me into an oncoming wave, and I came up gasping for air and looking like a drowned rat. When he draws his lower lip between his teeth, trying to hold back a smile, I see the seventeen-year-old who snuck glances at me when he thought I wasn’t looking.
Then the light breaks through the tree-cover, and I’m back in the present with a man I thought could only exist in my past but has quickly become the center of all my dreams for the future.
“What are you thinking about over there?” he asks, voice soft with affection.
“You,” I answer honestly. There’s no reason to hide from him anymore.
“What about me?”
I smirk. “Just thinking how lucky it is that you grew into your ears.”
The car lurches for half a second as he barks out a loud laugh. “Is that so? Wow, Indie. Mean.”
“What? I never said your big ears weren’t cute.” When I can’t quite stifle my laughter, I look out the window so he doesn’t see my expression. For the record, his ears were cute. But yeah, a little big.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t grow out of your freckles.” He reaches over the center console and skims his knuckles over my cheek. “I can’t wait to watch them get darker this summer.”
My chest warms as he takes my hand in his. “Oh yeah?”
“Yep. I used to track time with your freckles. At the start of June, they’d be light little flecks, like they are now. Every week, they’d get darker because we spent so much time outside.” His voice has this far-off quality that tells me he’s picturing it. “I’d dread when they were their most defined and your cheekbones were covered. It meant our time together was coming to an end.”
Oh, my heart.
“Is it too much to say that I hope I get to watch them darken, then fade? That I don’t want you to leave?” He lingers at a stop sign a few blocks from my rental, turning to face me. “I want you to stay, Indie.”
The air in the car thickens, expanding in my chest until it feels like I may burst.
Is he asking me to stay the summer or tostaystay?
