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“Yeah, I’m heading out,” Adrian said, plucking his coat from the closet by the door. “It’s getting late. Do you want a ride home?”
The way his eyes glinted as he met my gaze told me everything I needed to know.
“That would be great,” I grinned.
“You can just stay the night, Aves,” Dad said. “It’s cold out there, anyhow.”
Shit.I needed to get him off of that idea before he could settle on it and enforce it. “I would, but I’ve actually got a ton of work to do before I see Em tomorrow.”
“I can set ya up upstairs…”
“I haven’t backed up all my client files yet to the cloud,” I lied. “Sorry, Dad. Maybe tomorrow night?”
Dad sighed and knocked back the rest of his wine. “Fine. Movie night?”
I pulled myself up from the sofa and grinned at him. “You got it.”
Dad pulled my coat from the closet and I slipped it on before shoving my feet into my boots. He and Adrian idly talked business while I gathered the handful of things I’d come in with, and with a quick hug and a promise to come back tomorrow night for a screening ofThe Goonies, Adrian and I slipped quietly out the door and into the private landing that connected us to the elevator.
We didn’t dare say a word. We didn’t even touch, but the air between us felt thick enough to slice, and as we stared at each other in absolute, horrified silence while we waited for the elevator, I searched for words I wanted to say when we finally could.
But the moment the elevator doors shut behind us, he was on me instead.
He kissed me hard enough to send me back into the mirrored steel wall, his hands cupping my cheeks, his knee between my thighs. And so easily, again, he made me dizzy.
Chapter 24
Adrian
As much as I wanted to get her back home, I didn’t want to touch the Darkwater building with a ten-foot pole at that moment.
“Are you warm enough?” I asked, clutching her hand in mine as we walked along Fulton Street. I’d asked Oliver to wait at the corner of Church Street in case David tried to insist that we ride separately, but I just didn’t want to go back there. I wanted to be out and about with her, I wanted the fresh air, wanted to feel what it was like to be around her in public without hiding away in my apartment. And as the lights dazzled off One World Trade Center at the end of the road, it only solidified how much I wanted to stay out here. “We could grab food. I know it’s late, but…”
She huffed a chuckle, her breath fogging in front of her lips. “I’m warm enough. We can do whatever as long as it’s out of eyeshot of Dad’s floor.”
“Dear God, yeah, as far away from your father as possible,” I laughed. I pulled her closer to me, her shoulder brushing against my upper arm. “Feels like we’re sneaking around like teenagers.”
The stress from Stone & Co hung over me like a fucking storm cloud, but with her this close and thistouchable, it feltmore like I had an umbrella, like I wasn’t drowning under the weight of whatever would come of this. Andrew wanted to take it to the board—he’d outright said it to me before I left, said that he would follow through on his threat. And in complete honesty, for the first time, I was genuinely worried.
There was a chance he could sway them after this. I was the one who had pulled the plug, and he was betting on using that to prove I couldn’t do my job, I was sure. But there was no other choice to be made there. If the board wanted to pull me out of my position, I would have to let it happen.
But I felt like I could handle that with her by my side. And that, more than anything, was the most unnerving thing of all.
We wandered through the streets of downtown Manhattan together, the harsh wind dying down as they cut through the buildings. The cold wasn’t anywhere near as punishing as it was higher up, but the chill still soaked into us, enough to have her teeth chattering and her fingers freezing against mine. I shoved our joined hands into my pocket.
“We can go back to my place,” I offered, slowing as we made our way through Tribeca. Up ahead, a bagel cart with its lights still on sat on the edge of the sidewalk, and a little sign next to it read,Best Hot Chocolate In The World!I didn’t believe it for a second, but it would do the trick. “Or…”
“Don’t tell me you genuinely believe that’s the best hot chocolate in the world,” Ava laughed.
I popped my mouth open in an O as I pulled her toward it, stepping in front of her and walking backward. “You don’t think they’re lying, do you?”
She tried to hold back the adorable, stupid little grin sprouting across her cheeks. “Adrian.”
“Ava.”
The pink that had cropped up on her nose from the cold spread outward, darkening her cheeks dramatically and making her freckles stand out even more.
“What? Do you like it when I say your name?”
