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“Absolutely,” I said with a grin, and I gladly let him pull me farther down the corridor.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
BLAKE
My heart pounded wildly asI tugged Nell behind me toward the dark entryway ahead of us.
We stepped through it, and immediately the sensors began whirring.
The dome atop our heads lit up, the screens coming to life and sending stars, planets, comets, and more whizzing by overhead.
“The solarium?” She asked, grinning as she turned in a circle taking it all in. “That was your favorite part? Not the dinosaurs, the fossils, or even the taxidermized animals. You like the stuff you see on a TV screen?”
“It sounds lame when you say it like that,” I laughed, giving her hand another affectionate squeeze. “But I always loved Star Wars and Star Trek growing up as a kid. And this place always made me feel like I was a part of it.”
“Who would have thought,” she mused, her voice high and pensive.
“Thought what?”
A wicked gleam flashed in her eye, and her grin widened. “That you were such a nerd.”
I barked out a laugh and rolled my eyes at her, tugging her down farther into the room.
We walked past row after row of chairs until we got to the bottom, where there was a free space. It was typically used for a lecturer or a tour guide, but tonight, it would be our little space to lie down and look at the sky.
“Here,” I said, arriving at the small, raised dais and folding my legs underneath me to plop down on the ground. “Lay here with me.”
I lay back, and when she did the same, I pulled her body into me so that her head could rest on my shoulder.
Jupiter flashed above us, huge at first, and then the camera zoomed out. Its red, white, and yellow swirls violent as we took it all in.
“Plus, this is the best place for stargazing in the city,” I said with a grin, causing Nell to snort.
I turned my head to look at her. “What? The light pollution blocks out everything else.”
“Fair enough,” she answered with another light chuckle.
I’m not sure how long we laid like that, with her nestled into my arm as soft music played over the speakers and the cosmos drifted above our heads. But the one thing I did know was that I felt more content at that moment than I could recall being in a very, very long time.
“What are you thinking right now?” Her voice floated up to me over the music.
“That I’m really happy right now,” I answered her honestly, tilting my jaw down so that I could see her, only to find her looking up at me.
Her brown eyes shone in the artificial starlight as they raked over my face, the ghost of some untold emotion toying at her lips.
“Are you?” She asked with the cock of her head, doubt seeping into her voice, and immediately I hated it.
“Of course,” I answered her honestly, leaning forward to give her a quick kiss on her forehead.
She sighed and leaned into it, pressing her head to my lips so that the contact lasted a little bit longer than necessary before pulling back.
“I wish I could go back and talk to myself when I was a freshman in college,” I blurted without ever really making the decision to speak.
Her brow furrowed. “To talk about what?”
“This.” I raised a hand, gesturing between me and her. “That we’re…”
My words died out as I realized I didn’t know how to classify what we were. We weren’t dating. Fake dating, I guess? That’s about the closest I could get. But nothing about what had happened between us had felt fake, far from it.
