Page 35 of Falling

That made sense. He seemed like the kind of man who’d make good hot chocolates and know exactly when to make them.

“Rude,” I said. “I caught a trout with my bare hands. I’m basically a wilderness expert now.”

Booker snorted, his whole body shaking next to me as he chuckled. “You did, you caught a trout with your bare hands. Proud of you.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Really,” Booker said.

A warm ripple of happiness washed over me. Booker was proud of me.

I sipped my drink again to hide my ridiculous grin. “Sorry we ended up cutting the trip short.”

“Don’t be,” Booker said. “Aside from a few moments of being afraid I’d have to explain to Seth that you drowned and it was my fault, that was the best fishing trip of my life.”

“But if I had drowned…”

“Top five,” Booker joked, grinning again.

I felt like I smiled more around him than I had around anyone since…

Well, in a while. Too long.

“So mean,” I said, letting my head fall against his shoulder. “Are you busy today?”

“I normally keep a very full schedule of sitting alone in my apartment watching 80s movies on Sundays,” Booker said. “But if you need me to do something, I could probably find somewhere to slot you in.”

“Actually, I was hoping we could do more or less that. But umm. Here. And I’m ambivalent on the decade of the movies. And maybe you might stay and let me buy you dinner? Since I didn’t manage to catch it for you.”

Booker looked at me for a handful of heartbeats, long enough that I started to worry I’d said something wrong, that he was trying to come up with an excuse to get out of it.

“Deal,” Booker said. “On one condition.”

“You wanna pick the movie?” I asked. I was absolutely willing to let him, if it encouraged him to stay.

“I’ll trust your taste,” he said, waving me off. “No, I wanna make you dinner.”

“Oh.”

I paused to sip my hot chocolate and remembered the last time Booker had made me food. I’d still been thinking about it three days later, and I hadn’t forgotten how secretly talented he was. Or how spoiled he made me feel.

Who was I to say no to that?

“Okay.”

14

BOOKER

“You make a great movie night pillow,” Miles murmured, snuggling closer to me and letting me take more of his weight while Jeff Goldblum explained that life, uh, finds a way on the TV. It wasn’t quite an 80s movie in a temporal sense, but it had the soul of one.

I couldn’t believe how my day had gone. From Miles dragging me fishing, to him almost getting drowned by a trout, to inviting me to stay for dinner, to eating like he’d never seen food before and beaming at me between every bite, to… this.

Cuddling up to me like we’d been married for fifteen years while we watched our third movie of the day.

Happy. He was so obviously happy. Happier than I’d seen him. I wasn’t sure I had the brain power to process that I’d had a hand in it.

I also couldn’t stop thinking about where the conversation we’d been having earlier had stopped. Miles obviously had questions he still didn’t have answers to, but the moment was over. What would it take to get him back to the point of being comfortable enough to ask again?