And for an unguarded second, his face says something I don’t have words for.
“Ivy, I…” He exhales. “I’ve gotta check the cameras. Batteries. Make sure nothing goes haywire when we go live.”
“Not exactly a glowing review of your prep skills, Hartwell.”
“Blaze exists,” he counters.
“Fair.”
He gives me one last sharp look.
Then the door clicks shut.
I’m left standing under the spray until steam fills the room. The water is too hot. My hands move on autopilot: shampoo, lather, rinse. But my mind is stuck. Still caught on the way he said, with sincerity:
I’m so damn infatuated with you. All of you.
And that face right before he closed the door—his expression cracked open like he was one breath away from an unsaid truth. Then, poof, gone. As if he swallowed the secret.
What the hell was that?
The steam curls around me, thick and heavy.
Somewhere between rinsing my conditioner and reaching for the hotel body wash, I do something dangerous.
I imagine our future.
The campaign is over. Juliette’s judgy eyes aren’t keeping us on edge anymore. The pressure is off, the promotion has beendecided, and one of us won.Fine.Either way, we’re done being trapped in this limbo ofwhat ifsandmaybes.
And now?
Now we’ve stopped fighting each other and started fightingforeach other instead.
No more competition. No more keeping score. We get to be real with each other. Honest. And yeah, that might mean pretending self-control isn’t a thing and ripping each other’s clothes off mid-argument(which will get us into a lot of trouble at work).
But it’s just us.
Together.
And for once, I don’t list all the reasons it won’t work or all the ways this could blow up in my face. I see it. I feel it: no longer the fallback option, the compromise, the “good enough” choice.
I’m glowing.
It’s real…
Or it can be.
I’m being chosen. First.
MWARP! MWARP! MWARP!
The obnoxious, digital shriek of my iPad alarm chirps from the bedroom.
“Stopwatch! Your tablet is having a meltdown.” Cole says through the wall, amused, as if we’ve already domesticated our cold war into this strange, new rhythm.
“Snooze it!” I call back, grinning at the showerhead. “Code’s one-two-three-one!”
The alarm cuts off. I take my time, letting the warmth seep into my bones, letting myself want this.Want us.
