Page 319 of Wild Card 13

Dottie lunged toward a bush, snorted, and then sneezed so violently she startled herself.

Ty looked down at her. “Very intimidating.”

“She is a trained predator.”

“She is shaped like a bread loaf.”

“She heard that.”

Dottie shook her entire body, ears slapping softly against her cheeks, then resumed her walk with great dignity.

I sipped my coffee and listened to the sound of lake water through the trees, the distant slap of someone’s paddleboard against the dock, the buzz of cicadas in the heat already gathering under the morning sun. Late summer had a thickness to it, even in Minnesota. It held on. It pressed close. It made everything feel a little more honest than it had any right to be.

Ty glanced over at me. “You’re thinking loud.”

“That is not a real observation.”

“It is now.”

I cut him a look over the top of my cup. “You have gotten very confident for a man who once asked me if Dottie needed her own side of the bed.”

“She steals pillows.”

“She has needs.”

His mouth curved. “So do you.”

There was nothing particularly scandalous in the way he said it. His voice was low, yes, and there was heat under it because there was always heat under it, banked and steady and waiting. But there was tenderness.

Ty stepped closer, close enough that the sleeve of his T-shirt brushed my arm. “We’re going to be terrible at this today,” he said.

“At what?”

“Hiding.”

I looked toward the parking lot through the trees. The Frosthawks lake day was already happening somewhere across town at an old lodge the organization rented every summer for informal off-season chaos. Players, staff, families, kids, coolers, grills, towels, probably at least one injured ego before noon. Arlo wascatering because North Line had become less a restaurant and more a civic institution with excellent fries.

After weeks of people pretending not to notice the coffee and the way he looked at me when he thought no one else was watching.

We were absolutely going to be terrible at hiding.

A month earlier, the idea of walking into a Frosthawks event with Ty beside me would have made my skin feel too small. Not because I was ashamed of him. Never because of that. But because being seen meant people got to have opinions. Being seen meant the thing was real enough for others to point at.

I looked at him. “I know.”

His gaze moved over my face, careful in that way he had learned. He did not smile like this was a victory. He did not reach for me like my answer belonged to him. He only asked, “Okay?”

I stepped into him and kissed him. It was supposed to be quick. A small thing, maybe, something to answer him without making too much of the way my chest had gone tight.

Ty’s free hand came to my waist, gentle at first and then firmer when I did not step away. His thumb pressed into the bare strip of skin where my tank top had ridden up, and my whole body remembered him. Not eighteen-year-old Ty, not the boy with summer on his skin and a future he did not know how to hold yet.

His mouth moved over mine slowly, like we had time. Like he was not interested in stealing anything. Like he would rather be invited.

The kiss deepened, and the park disappeared in pieces. The cicadas. The lake. My coffee cooling in my hand. Dottie making a deeply offended noise at our feet.

Ty smiled against my mouth.

I pulled back just enough to breathe. “Your girlfriend is trying to walk the dog.”