Page 120 of The Best Shot

“Think on it.” I set the glass down carefully. “Right.”

“Yaz.”

“No, I hear you.”

“I’m not saying no.”

“I know.”

Except I didn’t, not quite. Not the way I wanted to. I’d asked him something big and reckless, and part of me had wanted the same kind of yes back. I knew he deserved time to think. I just wished he hadn’t needed it.

He was watching me too closely.

“You’re annoyed,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“Little bit.”

“I asked you to run away to Antarctica with me, and you said let me think on it like I’d offered you the last piece of pie.” I picked the glass up again. “I’m processing.”

He took it out of my hand and pulled me in. I went, my face against his chest, his hand at the back of my neck, broad and warm.

He didn’t say anything for a minute.

Just held on.

“I’m proud of you,” he said into my hair. “That first before anything else. I’m proud of you.”

I closed my eyes. “I know.”

“A couple days, Yaz.”

“Okay.”

Outside, the trees moved in the dark. The house settled around us, old wood shifting, dinner cooling on the stove.

I stayed there. Still a little annoyed. Still not leaving.

His hand at my nape stayed exactly where it was. He didn’t tell me what was going through his head.

I didn’t push.

34

“MY WOMAN NEEDS ME SOMEWHERE, I’M THERE.”

HALE

Ibrought cheesecake.

Not the grocery store kind. The real kind, from that Italian place off Main that only made them on Thursdays.

I’d been driving back from chess with Harry when I spotted the sign for Moretti’s and swerved into the parking lot before I could think too hard about why.

By the time I got to Ava and Grant’s, everyone was already parked.

Yasmine sat at the edge of the pool with her legs dangling in the water, Annie beside her looking supremely unconcerned. Ava and Tabby floated nearby on their stomachs, half asleep like they had nowhere to be for the rest of their natural lives.