“Up before we were,” Sharon says. “Leastyou’vegot something besides fire in there,” she adds with a wink.
Kael leans over and kisses me, sending shivers and something embarrassingly close to a swoon through me.
I’m not just losing control. I’ve lost it. This… this could be bad. Or it could be wonderful. The universe and all. This morning, at least, it’s good: the smell of breakfast, Kael beside me in the warm light, Sharon and Walt’s easy company.
Jenny pulls up around ten. When we step outside to meet her, downtown Paradise is awake.
From the ashes, a phoenix rises.I glance at Kael, then back at the street. Now I understand what Sharon meant.
Bicycles lean against storefronts. Laughter ricochets down the street. A dog walker loses her battle against too many leashes. It’s almost picturesque with the town’s recent history tucked under a fresh coat of normal. But the fire is still there in the way people meet each other’s eyes and nod, like the past is a language they all learned.
I take Kael’s hand, squeeze, and try not to plan anything beyond the moment.
CHAPTER 21
KAEL
After we leaveSharon and Walt’s, some noisy part of me finally shuts up. Though what’s left is quieter, it isn’t any kinder.
On the drive home, Jenny leans over the console and declares our sexual tension “palpable.” Ash decides the universe arranged it that way. I laugh, but the quieter voice in me knows the universe doesn’t hand out gifts. It runs a tab.
Maybe that’s true, but whatever sparked on the mountain is still hot enough for me to reply to Ash’s first text message, sent from two feet away, before we’ve even left the car.
Ash:Can I take you to dinner tonight?
“And you said yes?” Jamal asks, pacing my tiny studio behind me while I work.
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
After Jenny dropped me at home, I grabbed clean clothes, made myself date-presentable, and rushed to the studio. I haven’t left the easel since, and Jamal has been too busy grilling me about every minute since we last saw each other to get any of his own work done.
“No reason,” he says, so lightly it drags my gaze off the canvas.
He’s staring at the heap of clothes I tried on and rejected before landing on the shirt I’m wearing now. Then his gaze moves to me, to the brush in my hand, and back to the pile.
My chest tries caving in for reasons I’d rather leave unnamed. It’s my first day back in the studio, finally inside the zone I’ve been chasing for weeks, and still my hand twitches toward my collar under Jamal’s judgment.
“Do you hate this shirt?” I ask.
Jamal dips his chin, like the question proves his point. “You look amazing. You’ll be lucky if you make it to dinner, and honestly, I hope you don’t. Nobody douches for nothing.”
I scowl at him over my shoulder.
He misses it completely, too busy admiring my inspiration board.
“I’m just surprised,” he says. “You really never?—”
My phone buzzes on my supply table, and my heart decides we’re off to the races.
It’s Ash.
His name fills the screen above a contact photo he must’ve taken when he put his number in my phone. It’s crooked, from Sharon and Walt’s guest bed, with his face tilted at a terrible angle. It’s an objectively awful photo that would disrespect photography as a medium if he didn’t look so happy in it.
Worse, I know that smile. I was sitting right beside him, typing my number into his phone, and that smile was because of me. If I’d thought to add a photo in his phone, mine might even look the same.
Jamal snatches my phone off the table.
“Hi. Ash?”
