Page 40 of Until We Come Home

I go back to my dinner. “Fine. Changing the subject before I lose my appetite. You’re coming to the lake day, right?”

“Yep,” he says. “Barring any wildland deployments or sudden calls, I’ll be there. You?”

I force down the mental picture that keeps intruding—Mateo diving headfirst into a wildfire while shouting “Don’t worry, I’m careful!” as he vanishes straight into the inferno. Taking a bite of noodles that tastes like nothing at all, I try to steer my thoughts away from the dread sitting in my stomach.

“Um, yep, I’ll be there,” I say. “I’m trying to soak up as much Pacific Northwest summer as possible while I’ve got it. Lark and I hung out this morning, she let me play tourist and took me to so many spots I’d never have found on my own.”

“Sounds like a nice morning,” he says. “What kind of spots did you guys hit?”

“Well, we started with espresso at that cafe I’d been wanting to try,” I begin, catching our reflection in the large wall mirror—taking in the broad line of Mateo’s shoulders and those arms—when a lightbulb goes off in my head. I sit bolt upright. “Oh! You know what? I can use you!”

He tilts his head, eyeing me warily, fork halfway to his mouth. “Use me for what?”

“My move,” I say, setting my food down and grabbing his wrist, pulling him to his feet and out into the middle of the room.

“Mia, what are you doing,” he says, though he comes willingly enough, abandoning his dinner on the floor.

“The lift I was telling you about. It goes like this.” I step back and run it for him on the floor, the turn and the rise and the long suspended balance at the top, my arms out, holding it a beat before I come down. “Except in the air, with Dante holding me up. He’s not here, and you’re plenty strong enough to do it. You just have to be him for a few minutes.”

He looks deeply skeptical. “I’m not a dancer, Mia. I don’t know how to⁠—”

“Don’t worry, you don’t need to know anything. You just need to hold me up,” I tell him. “Pretend I’m a civilian and you’re carrying me out of a burning building, if that helps. Except instead of slung over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes, I’m very impressively balanced over your head in a perfect arch.”

This does not make him look any less skeptical, but he doesn’t argue.

I take his hands and plant them on either side of my waist. “Okay, so you’re going to grab me here on my lower waist—don’t give me that look—and then I’m going to bend my knees and jump, and you lift on the jump. Then hold me up there while I do the move I just showed you. Might take a few tries, so bear with me. Ready?”

He nods, adjusting his grip, looking like a man who has been handed a live grenade and told it’s probably fine. His palms are hot against the strip of bare skin between my top and my leggings, his long fingers spread wide.

I bend my knees into a quick plié and spring upward, and he launches me high into the air as if I weigh nothing at all, his arms locking overhead without a drop of effort. His face tilts up to follow me. It’s perfect.

I lock into the extension, sweeping my legs out into a long suspended arch while my arms fan outward. In the mirror we look like a photograph—me stretched out sky-high, and Mateo planted underneath like he was poured there. He might as well be a trained partner for how steady he holds. The move is almost right, but the angle of my back is off.

"Hmm," I murmur. "Okay, set me down a second."

He lowers me smoothly until my soles touch the floorboards. Stepping back, I test the upper-body placement on my own, marking the port de bras while he stands with his hands at his sides, watching me with stoic patience. I do love a man who takes direction without complaining.

I roll my shoulders out. "Alright, let's try it again."

The ghost of a smirk crosses his face as he steps in, his hands finding my hips once more. I take off, he lifts, and suddenly I’m weightless above the floor, the whole phrase clicking into place as my spine settles into an arch.

“Lower me just a hair, the line needs to be flatter,” I say, tracking our reflection in the glass and adjusting my arm position. “There. Right there. Hold that.”

He looks up at me with intense focus, as if keeping me balanced is the only thing in the universe that matters. When I give him a nod, he brings me down with agonizing slowness, my chest brushing against his on the way past, my hands coming to rest against his shoulders to steady myself until my toes catch the wood and his fingers are still on my hips.

An electric shiver runs through me, one that has no business being there—not in this space, and definitely not with my best friend.

His warm hands are still firm against my bare skin, sending heat straight through me, and all at once I’m back against a wall in Napa two years ago with his mouth on my neck and his hand down the front of my dress. Suddenly I’m hyper-aware that the two of us are alone in this room.

I go still, looking up into his dark eyes.

His chest is right in front of mine, his breathing coming a little faster than a basic lift accounts for, and for a fraction of a second his grip tightens on my waist, possessive, like he’s got no intention of letting go.

And fuck me, I’m not sure I want him to ever let go. He’s close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him, close enough that if I tipped my chin up, if I rose onto my toes, I could kiss him, and it takes everything in me not to close a gap that feels like it’s shrinking on its own.

My hands linger on his shoulders, and his eyes dip down to my lips for a split second before snapping back up to hold my gaze.

“Alright,” I say, quickly backing out of his space, my voice sounding breathy and slightly off-key. “Yeah. That’s the shape. I can run the rest solo.”