“Well, why were you so rude all the time? Telling me what to do and making fun of me?”
He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “The first time we met, I just poked my head into your room to say hi, and you looked up from your desk and gave me the biggest smile. To say I was blown away by that moment would be a massive understatement. Your smile lit up everything. And I stood there with my mouth open like a freaking idiot because I lost all words for about thirty seconds.”
Heat flamed my blushing cheeks at his confession. I remembered that moment so plainly. I was in the middle of reading essays at my desk when a knock at my door sounded. I looked up, and there stood the most attractive man I’d ever seen, grinning at me. I don’t care who you are, there was no way a person couldn’t return that smile. But our interactions after that initial meeting had been much more underwhelming.
“But then, I never saw that smile again—until we came to the lodge. From our first meeting, I had this idea of you as this vivacious woman, but I didn’t see that in almost any of your interactions at the school. You lit up for your kids, and you were real with Millie, but I watched you with everyone else, and it felt like you were always sizing down for your audience. Your smiles were fake. You took on everybody’s workload because you wouldn’t tell them no. You cleaned up after everyone. You edited papers without getting paid. I didn’t handle it the way I probably should have, but in my own stupid way, I thought I was trying to help you.”
I thought of Miles in the kitchen, not letting me wash Jason’s dishes, physically taking them out of my hands and putting them back in the fridge. I thought of all our other interactions together the past nine months. I had seen him as arrogant and bossy, but now…
“What’s next?” Miles asked.
“What?”
“You’ve still got your freak-out face on. What else are you worried about?”
“We work together,” I whispered. If he really wanted to know, I had to tell him all of my concerns.
He didn’t even flinch. “It’s not against the rules.”
“What if we break up? I’d have to change schools. Or you would. I’ve already done that once, and I…really like it at Stanton.”
His brow furrowed. “Why would you have to change schools?”
Were men really that dense?
“We work across the hallway from each other. Can you imagine how awkward that would be? What if it’s a bad breakup? One of us would have to go.”
A grin spread across his face. He was laughing at me, and suddenly, I wanted to punch him. I glared at him as I began to move away when his arm shot out, nudging me back against the wall, facing him. He removed his arm.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. How about this? If we ever break up, I promise I’ll make it a manageable amount of awkward. Nothing too terrible.”
A small smile managed to escape my lips, even as I tried to hold it back. I turned my face away. With a thumb and a touch as airy as a whisper, he turned it back.
“Hey,” he said softly. “I know what this is. I’ve seen the movies. I write the books. The part where one of us gets scared. Our dark moment. And I get it. It’s scary to go back somewhere when everything’s changed.” He grinned. “Especially with the fact that you have to face Millie again, knowing she was right about us. It’ll be the worst.”
Again, my stupid smile came back, unbidden. I shook my head and tried to press my lips together, unable to meet his gaze.
He took a step toward me, and my breath caught, though he still wasn’t touching me. I stared at the top button on his flannel shirt.
“But what about this? What if, instead of breaking up with each other, we just broke up with all the fake parts of this week? Let’s break up with the notion that any part of this has been fake. Because it hasn’t been fake for one second to me.”
I covered my face with my hands, unable to take the sweet fire in his eyes as he stared at me.
“What else?” he whispered. Warm hands slowly uncovered mine from my face. It was all so sweet, and his eyes were the kind of eyes I could get lost in. Inviting and warm. I wanted to wrap my arms around him so tight, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I wasn’t done, so I removed my hand from his and kept them lonely at my side.
“What if I’ve just been some sort of adrenaline rush for you while we’ve been here? You got me to do some crazy stuff here with you, but when we get back, I’ll just be boring again. Grammar Queen, remember? I will never go skydiving. Ever. Really. If I survived you pushing me out of a plane, the first thing I’d do when I got back on the ground would be to kill you. And if I didn’t survive, I would haunt you for the rest of your days. And I’ll never go bungee-jumping with you.” He took a step closer while I babbled on, a leaky faucet unable to shut off. “I mean, I could maybe try a white-water-rafting trip, but that’s it. And only if it’s not a super scary river. I’m talking baby rapids. Bumps, really, not—"
He reached out and clutched a handful of my shirt at the waist and began pulling me closer and closer until I landed in his arms. I had an impressive speech left to give but found the words hard to form when he leaned forward, his mouth hovering close to mine.
“You are a rush to me. Every time I make you smile, my heart rate goes through the roof. The way you blush and bite your lip and pretend to be annoyed when I tease you…” He patted his chest. “Straight shot of dopamine. Let’s not even talk about what your laugh does to me. But you’re not just my dopamine hit. You’re my soft place to land when I come back down. I don’t need you to go skydiving with me. Or rock climbing. I’m perfectly happy reading a book. Or hanging out watching a movie with you. But there are times when I’d want us to get out of our comfort zones. Make some memories. I want to pick our moments, whatever they are, and live them.”
“What if it doesn’t work out?” I asked again, my voice more stable now. Nervous. “All relationships start with pretty words.”
He shook his head. “You can ‘what if’ your whole life away. Relationships are always going to be scary, whether we work together or not. There are always unknowns, but you’ve got to take a chance on something, or else you’re going to spend your life wondering what could have been.”