Better question.
Why isn’t she pulling away?
The lobby is loud. People talking. Luggage rolling. Someone laughing too loudly near the elevators. But it all sounds far away, distant, as if I’ve ducked underwater and the world is happening somewhere above me.
Her lips part.
My thumb presses into her hip instinctively. The smallest squeeze.
She’s off the bench in an instant. I pull back at the same time, too fast, too abrupt.
THUD.
I hit the floor.
“That—” she starts.
“Didn’t happen,” I finish.
We stare at each other, not blinking. Both pretending we weren’t one millimeter away from doing something catastrophically stupid on the Lovers’ Bench.
And the worst part? Neither of us looks convinced.
THHRRUMMMM.
An engine roars outside. First distant, then, right on top of us.
The floor vibrates. The chandeliers clatter like a cage of nervous birds. The stained-glass trembles.
The crowd at the Singles Activism Weekend—women in flowy dresses and strategic lip gloss, cologne-soaked men who swear they’re only here for marine conservation—freezes mid-check-in.
VROOOOOOOOM.
Every head turns toward the entrance.
Ivy’s eyes go wide. “He wouldn’t.”
I lift my camera out of my bag, power it on, and start framing my shot.
“Oh, Stopwatch. He absolutely would.”
The lobby doors BLAST open.
Sand shoots across polished marble.
And Blaze Tate rides straight into the Hotel Bellwether on a lifeguard-yellow quad like he’s never been toldnoa day in his life.
At that exact second—
“Cake By The Ocean” detonates from the ATV speakers.
“BLAZE!” the women scream.
The men in the lobby square their shoulders as if to salute their captain.
He’s six-foot-something of golden chaos. His bare, sun-browned chest is a canvas of colorful tattoos, and his damp, wind-tossed blond hair falls into his eyes. He grins like the world is his sandbox and he just brought the toys.
Blaze guns it.
