I want it for her. I want Hopkins to call her in the spring and say yes. I want her face to light up the way it lit up in that parking lot. I want her to go. I want all of it for her, every bit of the future Rome has been pushing for, every door that opens onto something bigger and brighter than what she'd have if she stayed.
It also hollows me out from the inside every time I thinkabout it for longer than a few seconds. So I don't think about it for longer than a few seconds.
"What are you thinking about?"
She's finished the croissant and moved on to a strawberry, holding it by the stem and considering it the same way she once considered a cantaloupe at the grocery store back home. With grave suspicion and total commitment.
"Nothing," I say.
"Liar." She bites the strawberry, her eyes never leaving my face. "You have that face."
"Same face I was born with, I imagine."
"The one where you're thinking deep thoughts in your head about things you won't say out loud, smartass." She gestures at me with what's left of the strawberry. "That face."
"I was thinking about how you eat," I tell her, which is not a lie, just not the whole truth. "Like someone's going to take it away from you."
"Survival instinct." She throws the strawberry stem at me, and it lands on my chest. "This is the last room service I'm getting before we go back to sneaking around like teenagers, so I'm making it count. Stop deflecting."
"I'm not deflecting."
"You're deflecting, and you're doing it charmingly, which is your most annoying move."
I pick up the stem, and flick it back at her. She catches it, which is genuinely impressive, and I file that away as another thing I now know about Lily Moreland. Quick reflexes. Good hands. Competitive about everything, even fruit projectiles.
"I like this," I say, and the words come out before I've fully decided to say them.
"Throwing fruit at each other?"
"This." I turn my coffee cup in my hands, studying the dark surface instead of her face because her face is too much right now.
"Being here. With you. I've never done this before. The whole thing. Hotel, breakfast, three days of just being somewhere with someone."
She stops chewing and sets the strawberry down.
"I didn't know that," she says, the teasing edge gone from her voice.
"Now you do."
Her eyes soften, and my mouth curves into something that's probably embarrassingly tender. She is so very beautiful. All of her, though her face is a problem I will never solve
"Come here," she murmurs, setting the tray aside.
I go. There's no version of me that doesn't go when she asks. I scoop her up and she climbs into my lap, her legs folding around me, her arms circling my neck. Her fingers move through my hair in slow, lazy strokes that make my eyes close. I could stay here. I could stay right here in this specific moment for the rest of my life and need nothing else.
"I like this too," she whispers. "For the record."
I pull her closer, my arms crossing behind her back, and take her in.
I broke my promise to Rome, but I can't find it in me to regret it, even knowing what it will cost when it comes out. What I can do, what I owe her, is never hold her back. Never let whatever this is become the reason she stays in Harbor Hill instead of chasing the thing she's been building toward her whole life.
I kiss the top of her head. She burrows deeper into my neck, her arms tightening around my torso. I hold her there, and I do not think about spring.
Last night here.The hotel room looks lived in now, three days of us scattered across every surface. Our shoes by the door. My jacket on the chair. A shared mess that feels more intimate than anything we've done in the dark.
She comes out of the bathroom in a towel, her hair dark and wet against her shoulders, and stops in the doorway like she knows exactly what she's doing to me.
"Last night," she says, biting that lip. That lip that is mine to bite.
