Page 54 of Nowhere to Hide
“In my apartment.”
“I don’t know your life.”
We keep walking toward the lawn, where Luca has invited the whole team and various hangers-on. He sent a message — something about the weather being wasted if we stayed inside — and half the team replied before I even got out of bed.
Halfway there, she elbows me. “Are we…”
I let it hang a second too long. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes whatever you want.”
She slows until I notice, and we end up standing in the middle of the path with a guy on a longboard slaloming around us. A few early risers are out — someone on a bench, a few joggers, and a couple sprawled on the grass, blinking like they’ve never seen the sun before.
“Nope.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Whatever you decided ‘yes’ was.”
I look at her. The light’s catching her hair, her cheeks pink in a way that has nothing to do with the cold, and I think how easy it would be to head back to my apartment and spend the whole damn day getting to know every inch of her again.
“We’re together,” I say. “If you want that.”
She takes that in, and the smile gets away from her. “Yeah,” she says. “I want that.”
After looking around to make sure no one’s watching, she leans in to steal a quick kiss, then starts walking again. I follow, falling in beside her, and her pinky hooks mine for three steps and then she lets go.
“Are we telling people?” she says, her voice light, but the question is loaded.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Are we?”
“I don’t want to be a secret.” She says it fast, like she’s been holding it all morning. “I’m done with that. I’m done with hiding.”
“Okay,” I say, with a shrug, because she told me last night she didn’t want to get hurt, which means she sets the pace.
She told me other things in the dark after we’d slept together, too — that whatever she and Mason had been, it never got far — and it makes how far we got and this conversation feel very, very special.
“But I also don’t want today to be about everyone else.” She finally looks up at me. “One day, before the hockey thing and the Halden thing and the inevitable moment Ivy finds out.”
“Reasonable.” I grin, then stop and turn to face her. I take her hands, squeeze once, then let go. “You can be selfish about it for longer if you want, as long as I get to sleep with you.”
“Don’t be crude.” She slaps my chest. “I’m trying to construct a plan.”
“Right. Sorry. What’s the plan?”
She considers, then resumes walking. “We are two people who happen to be in the same social circle. We are familiar in the way you’re familiar with anyone you’ve met a few times.”
“I’ve seen you naked, Sloane…” My voice trails off.
She gives me an impish grin. “Whereas I barely know you at all.”
“Harsh, but got it.”
We reach the lip of the slope where the path opens onto the green, and we can see the whole thing below — including the soccer pitch Luca has already set up with cones, and his portable speaker doing a tinny version of a song I half-recognize.
She slows at the edge. “We split here.”
