Page 61 of Slapshot Bride

I nod.

The drive home has my heart in my throat.

The hills are quiet. The gate slides open for me. The house is dark except for the lamp by the couch, which means she has been waiting up and fallen asleep.

She's curled on her side. The new James Hadley Chase is open on her chest, her hand splayed across the pages, her hair coming out of its braid. The blanket is half off her. Her face is soft in a way I'm not going to think about right now.

I crouch down.

I lift the book off her chest and set it on the coffee table, then I scoop her up.

She makes a small sound. Her face tucks into my neck, and a certain warmth washes over me. I carry her up the stairs, lay her in my bed, and pull the covers up over her.

I sit on the edge of the bed, and watch her sleep.

I had one job tonight. I rehearsed it in the car on the way home. I have the sentences ready. Riley. There is something I need to tell you. Six months ago. I have all of it.

I sit on the edge of the bed for a long time.

She looks so peaceful when she sleeps, that I don’t have the heart to wake her.

A while later, I’m lying beside her, shirtless, with the covers drawn up to my chest. The sky outside the window starts the slow turn it does toward morning. She turns in her sleep, finds my hand on top of the covers, and curls her fingers around two of mine.

My heartbeat falters, and I try to ignore it.

I turn on my side and drape my arm over her torso, slightly pulling her closer.

I have to tell her. Come clean before things get messy.

12

RILEY

Project: Take My Life Back

I’ve been on the lounger by the pool for two hours.

The afternoon is soft, and the Los Angeles sun is the kind of light that makes everything look like it has been color-graded for a film.

I'm in the only swim-adjacent thing in my new wardrobe, which is to say a pair of tiny cotton shorts I bought at Valentina’s because Easton wordlessly held them up off the rack with an eyebrow raised, and a white tank top I may never have the occasion to wear to since my life currently revolves indoors.

My hair is in another one of my messy buns, with strays everywhere, but as long as they’re not in my eyes, I don’t really mind.

My notebook is open on my stomach. My phone is on the small side table beside me, and there is a glass of water sweating onto a coaster I found in a drawer Easton has clearly never opened.

He left at six-thirty this morning. He left coffee in the machine, a note on the counter that said back by four, don’t wait, and the hall light on for me.

I stare at everything I’ve scribbled on the note in the past hour.

My supposed plan to get my life back. Close the Preston chapter. Get my parents on track. Find a job or something. Anything useful to keep me going.

But now that I look at it carefully, there’s only one thing I’ve underlined. The one thing I’m not sure I can still do. Photography.

It’s been six years.

Six years since I last touched a camera. Six years since I picked up the portfolio I was working on and put it in a closet, where it has sat ever since, behind a stack of winter coats Preston insisted I buy and never wore. Six years since I last sat in front of a frame and felt the small specific click of yes, that, that is what I was looking at. Hell, I’m not even sure I can tell better angles and good lighting.

How the hell am I going to make this into a career? Live off it?