When we stopped at a crosswalk, she glanced at me and smirked. “What’s that look?”
“Just thinking,” I said.
“Dangerous.”
“Probably.”
“About what?”
I shrugged. “About how maybe there’s a way to have both.”
She frowned. “Both what?”
“You,” I said before my brain could veto it. “Your city. My town. Something in between us.”
She went quiet, eyes flicking to the red light overhead like she was trying to find the right words there. “That’s not simple.”
“Nothing worth it ever is.”
Her lips parted slightly, surprise softening her features. The light changed, and she turned away, stepping off the curb. “Come on, small-town philosopher. You’re blocking traffic.”
I followed her into the street, heart tripping, rain dampening the shoulders of my jacket.
We walked for another block in the good kind of silence, where every step felt like a conversation we hadn’t figured out how to have yet.
And when she finally glanced over her shoulder, the corner of her mouth curled up.
“You’re beautiful, Mel. You fit this city.”
“You think Seattle is pretty?”
“In its own way.”
“You're full of surprises.” The sound of her laughter mixed with the city, the echo of Reckless River still somewhere in both of us.
“Show me around your city,” I said again, quieter this time.
She looked back at me, eyes shining with rain and something like hope.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Melanie
I didn’t know my heart could do that at the same time, skip and stumble until Drew said, “Show me around your city.”
Not a tease. Not a dare. An invitation.
It shocked me more than seeing him in my lobby, more than the fact that he’d driven hours with a box of mangled gingerbread pancakes and scones labeled us For Brave Idiots. He hated crowds. He hated rules that didn’t make sense. He hated elevators that smelled like a wet umbrella and mystery soup. And still, he asked to see where I live—really see it. The way I love it. The way it loves me back.
So I did the only thing that made sense. I took his hand, tugged him toward the street, and said, “Come on then. First stop’s obvious.”
“Lead the way, city girl,” he said, and I fell a little harder.
We cut down toward Pike Street, the air damp and clean in that Seattle way that always smells faintly like a just-washed sidewalk and the ocean dreaming nearby.
The rain had dialed itself to mist, and the neon ahead started to bleed into the evening like watercolors.
When the red clock and the PUBLIC MARKET CENTER sign came into view, I watched his face instead of the landmark. The way the red lit his jawline and settled in his eyes like fire. The way he slowed without realizing he’d slowed.
