“With what?”
“With her dating whoever it is that she’s with now.”
He seems to give the matter some thought before saying, “I probably wouldn’t have introduced them if I wasn’t.”
Oh.
Oh, that is deeply inconvenient for my entire internal narrative.
I take a sip of water. “Well,” I say, with as much dignity as I can assemble, “Devon also called me your wingwoman, so I thought …”
Miller goes very still. “He called you what?”
“His wingwoman,” I say, in a cheerful tone that I’m quite proud of. “Apparently he thought I came with you tonight so you could chat up Raquel. Which, honestly, is a very reasonable assumption for Devon to make, because why would anyone assume that you—” I gesture vaguely at all of him. “Would be here with me.”
He is quiet for a long moment.
The kind of quiet that has weight to it.
“That’s what you’ve been thinking,” he says. Not a question.
“I mean.” I shrug one shoulder with studied casualness. “It’s not an unreasonable conclusion.”
“It’s completely wrong.”
“Is it?”
He looks at me steadily. “Yeah. It is.”
I want to push further. I want to ask exactly what he means by that, want to nail it down with specifics and evidence and a signed affidavit. But the reception is breaking up around us now,and the moment feels too large and too fragile for a public setting.
So I just nod.
File it away.
Try not to assign too much meaning to it.
The walk back to the barndominiums is warm and quiet and slightly uneven underfoot, which gives me a legitimate excuse to hold on to his arm. The string lights are still on, casting everything in that soft gold that makes even a cluster of repurposed sheds look like something out of a fairy tale.
I’m still working through it all in my head. Raquel. The wingwoman thing. The way he said completely wrong, like it was the most obvious fact in the world.
We reach my door. I fish out the key card from the dragon clutch — which takes longer than it should, because the dragon clutch is adorable but structurally complicated — and turn to face him.
He’s leaning one shoulder against the column that supports the pitched roof of the porch, arms loose at his sides. Watching me with that expression I can never quite read. Steady and warm and entirely focused.
He’s not looking away, like there’s somewhere else he wishes he was. But he’s also not crowding my space the way he was earlier. He’s not close.
“You’re not supposed to be standing there,” I tell him.
One eyebrow lifts. “Where am I supposed to be?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure where you’re supposed to be.” I wave a hand. “I apparently misread the entire assignment.”
“You didn’t misread anything.”
“I thought tonight was—” I stop. Start again. “I thought you and I were?—”
“We were,” he says quietly.
