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“Even better.” He pulls out his phone and starts typing. “Well, then, chauffeur—” He taps the car’s screen and types in an address, making a GPS route appear. “Take us to Culver City.”
23
ZIGGY
Playlist: “Somewhere Only We Know,” rhianne
“It’s…closed.” I frown at my favorite indie bookstore, which I’ve been going to for years. They have a very impressive romance section, which isn’t often the case in a general collection bookstore. Since I’ve been going there, special ordering a number of fantasy romance titles, they’ve happily broadened their inventory even more.
“Have a little faith in me, Sigrid,” Sebastian throws me one of those devastating long-dimpled smiles over his shoulder as he opens his door. He’s halfway out of the car when he leans back in and grabs the container of chokladbiskvier. “Now that I can eat these without risking throwing them right back up,” he mutters.
“Hey!” I shove open my door and shut it, following him. “You’re the one who dangled those keys in front of me. I warned you.”
He rounds the car to my side and takes my hand, squeezing gently. “You did.” His thumb sweeps across the back of my hand. I shiver as I stare at him and heat dances across my skin from where he’s touching me. The wind picks up, cool and a little damp, thankfully giving me a reason besides the real one for my slip.
Sebastian tugs me gently toward the door. “Come on, you. Let’s get inside and warm you up.”
“But, it’s—”
“Closed,” he says, his back to me as he pulls me along. “So you’ve said.”
I try really hard not to stare at his butt in his dark jeans, but it’s a lost cause. Hockey player butts—with the exception of my brother’s, of course—are truly a thing of beauty.
With his free hand, Sebastian pulls his phone from his pocket and types something. Not ten seconds later, his phone dings. He leans in, reading his screen, then crouches, entering a code on the door’s lock, which glows red. The lock beeps, then flashes green. Sebastian stands and turns the handle, then pushes open the door. “Ladies first.”
“What is happening?”
Sebastian sets a hand on my back and nudges me forward. “The owners are big Kings fans.”
I do a double take as he shuts the door behind me. “Wait, they just gave you the code to their bookstore?”
“I mean, I might have offered them very nice complimentary tickets to our first regular-season home game to incentivize them, but…yeah.”
I peer around as Sebastian walks off and flips a switch, then another, brightening the store from the faint nightlights that greeted us. He doesn’t turn the lights all the way up, leaving the space gently illuminated, the lanterns over each aisle dimmed to a soft glow.
“Sebastian, this is wild.”
He turns my way and sets the chokladbiskvier container on the checkout desk. “I know you love books.”
Sometimes, if I’m up at the A-frame at just the right time in spring, I catch that day when the wind knocks the blossoms off the first big old tree on the hiking path from the house. It feels like magic, like a moment from another world—so perfectly lovely, my heart can’t hold it all in. That’s how I feel right now—like those delicate, perfumed petals are drifting not around but inside me, filling me with something too lovely, too wonderful to be possible.
“After your game,” he says, raking a hand through his hair, tugging at it, “I was going to see if you wanted to come here, but then—”
“My brother blew in like an intrusive, albeit sweet and smiling, semitruck and invited you to family dinner. Then you bolted.”
Sebastian drops his hand, nodding. “Then I bolted.” He blows out a slow breath and peers up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t want to be an inconvenience with my new diet and—”
“Sebastian! We’ve got years of practice, cooking gluten-free for Rooney; we could have fed you easily. And even if it took a stop at the grocery store for a few items, it would never be an inconvenience, to make sure you could eat with us.”
“This is new for me, Sigrid. I don’t know how to ask for that without feeling like an asshole.”
“But it’s my family,” I tell him. “We’d never see it like that.”
“That’s just it. Ziggy, what you have—with your family—it’s so far beyond me. I have…” He glances off, shaking his head. “No fucking frame of reference for closeness like that, kindness like that…love like that.”
My heart trips on that word. Love.
“But,” he says, crossing the space between us, brushing knuckles with mine, tangling our fingers. “I’d like to try. Because, Ziggy, at your game, with your family, that was the best thing I’ve ever been around, except maybe you in your dragon-towel turban.”
