Page 104 of The Storm

“Maybe some of them are hidden gems,” Bridget says.

“If you say so,” Nick mutters.

My lips twitch at the sardonic note in his voice.

Bridget reaches out and ruffles Nick’s hair.

“Hey!” he snaps, pulling his head away.

Bridge leans back in her seat with a smug smile. “You’re just so adorably grumpy.”

Nick scowls and sends me a look that, I have to agree with Bridge, is adorably grumpy. “Can I leave her by the side of the road?”

“You could, but it’d be pretty pointless. She’ll find a way to catch up with you and she’ll take her revenge. Experience tells me it won’t be pretty.”

Bridge sends him a toothy grin in the rearview mirror. “I get creative when somebody is mean to me.”

“She scares me,” Nick whispers from the corner of his mouth.

“A little bit of fear is healthy. Like a survival mechanism,” Bridge says, and I laugh.

“I feel like I should’ve stayed home,” Nick says dryly.

“No, you shouldn’t have. If you had stayed at home you’d have just taken extra shifts at work. You need to kick back for a bit and relax,” I say. “This will be fun. Ocean City. Live music. Street food and roller coasters. Funnel cake. Arcade games. And I mean, okay, you don’t care about roller coasters, but the rest will still be great. Just try and tell me you don’t like funnel cake. Funnel cake, Nicholas. You know who doesn’t like funnel cake?”

“Can you say funnel cake one more time to really ram it home?” he asks. The terse question is undercut by the small, affectionate smile.

“People who are born without taste buds and the ability to feel joy,” I say. “That’s who.”

He tries to fight it, but then he starts to laugh and rolls his eyes at me. And I smile back. And everything—everything—feels the sort of perfect that shouldn’t exist but apparently does.

Nick parksthe car after circling the block a few times. There are a lot of people out and about today, an overwhelming number of them tourists. The boardwalk is packed so tightly with bodies that I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll even fit on it.

“Tourists,” Dia says with a hint of disapproval.

“Technically, you’re a tourist, too,” I say.

“It’s like you’ve never heard of double standards.”

Nick grabs his backpack out of the trunk and swings it over his shoulder before he comes and stands next to me, so close that whenever either of us moves, our bodies brush against each other.

And whenever he looks at me, my heart does this sudden jump like it’s desperately trying to get my attention.

He’s dressed like everyone else, in shorts and a T-shirt with sunglasses covering his eyes, but it doesn’t help. He doesn’t blend in. Not even a little. It’s like there’s a spotlight on him that no one else can see. I know, logically, that it’s probably just me. That I’m the one making him stand out.

Still.

I don’t get how other people can just exist around him like nothing’s happening.

He grabs a baseball cap hanging off his backpack and drops it onto my head, tugging the brim lower and muttering something about sunburn and heatstroke.

His fingers linger for a moment too long, brushing my temple before he pulls his hand back.

His eyes are impossibly dark, and I desperately wish we were alone instead of on this overcrowded pier.

“Are you two coming or not?” Dia calls from up ahead, already walking down the boardwalk.

I force myself to look away from Nick. “Coming.”