Page 116 of Dream On, Liar

Whatever was happening between us, we needed to be careful.

Much more careful.

Because wanting him was one thing.

Acting on it could destroy far more than either of us had admitted.

20

Maeve

THE SECOND MATCH SERIES ended without either of us setting fire to the other.

I considered that a considerable achievement.

Somewhere between the first Test and the final training session, the sharp edges between us had worn down. Not disappeared entirely. Rihaan was still Rihaan, which meant he could be spectacularly irritating before breakfast and somehow manage to make a perfectly reasonable instruction sound like a personal attack.

But I had learned him.

I knew the particular crease between his eyebrows that meant his shoulder was bothering him, even when he insisted otherwise. I knew when his sarcasm meant he was genuinely annoyed and when he was simply trying to make me laugh. He’d learned me too, annoyingly well.

He’d started handing me his arm without being asked.

Started telling me when something hurt.

Started making jokes while I worked instead of sitting there in stubborn silence.

And I’d started waiting for those jokes.

That was the part I hadn't quite figured out what to do with.

It had happened quietly.

There hadn’t been a moment where we’d decided we liked each other. No grand truce announcement. No sudden transformation.

Just hundreds of tiny things.

A coffee left beside my laptop because he’d remembered how I took it.

A muttered joke when I was trying not to laugh during a team meeting.

His shoulder brushing mine in a corridor, followed by that brief glance between us that somehow lasted longer than it should have.

I had stopped bracing myself whenever he walked into a room.

Somehow, I’d started looking forward to the would.

Which was precisely why, when Samyra called me after a particularly long day the field, I had debated on skipping our call.

Because if there was someone I couldn’t hide the truth from, it was her.

The evening air had cooled enough to raise goosebumps along my arms as I sat in the chair on my balcony. Somewhere below, traffic moved through the streets in a distant, constant hush.

Her face appeared on my screen.

She took one look at me and narrowed her eyes. “You look different.”

I frowned. “I look exactly the same.”