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“We?” I tease him.
“We,” he repeats. “You talked to Chari. And my sister. You know this is different than usual for me, Evie.” He exits off the highway and, at the bottom of the ramp, stops for a traffic light. “You have to know I’m in love with you.”
My heart does a little dance at his words.
His phone rings. Bad timing.
“Hold on a sec.” Instead of putting it on speaker, he answers. As he talks to someone, can’t tell who, I can barely sit still in my seat.
You have to know I’m in love with you.
There’s no doubt in my mind I’m in love with him too. Which is exactly why this whole thing is scary as hell.
I’m not going anywhere, Evie.
Honestly, I don’t want him to. Go anywhere, that is. Zara called me out, and I’d do well to take her advice. She and Cole nearly split up when he went back to work in Philly. They might be happily married now, but there was a rocky period when things weren’t so sure. Zara made me promise not to put myself, to put us, through that same hell.
“You two are clearly meant to be together,” she’d said. And she was right.
“Sorry about that,” he says, smiling like there was some kind of inside joke. I want to ask who he’d been talking to, but I have a feeling it has something to do with our destination. “So what was I saying?” His expression tells me he knows exactly what he’d been saying.
“Something about being in love with me?”
He reaches toward me again, but this time his hand finds my thigh instead of the center console. The difference is immediately apparent. Although his hand doesn’t move, the way Tris shifts in his driver’s seat tells me I’m not the only one that is keenly aware of the sexual tension between us.
“I think,” he says, “you were actually about to say something too.”
This man is incorrigible.
“I was?” I pretend to think about that for a second, knowing I’m about to jump in with both feet. As if there was any question. Maybe a little one. But Tris has erased any doubts with those three little words. And his commitment to making this work.
“Oh yes. I remember now. I was about to say that I love you too.”
I don’t even notice where we’re going. My entire concentration has been on Tristano. On his words. His declaration. But now, as we pull off the main street onto a side street, I look around.
“Good,” he says. “Because I have a surprise for you.”
“I didn’t even look at the exit sign,” I say. “Clearly we’re at the Jersey Shore.”
“Clearly.”
I try to find a sign. None of this looks familiar to me. I’ve been to the shore before, but never here, exactly.
“You’ve never been to Avalon before?”
I shake my head. “I was in Cape May once with my parents. And I’ve been to Wildwood on a girls’ trip. But I’ve never been here before. Is it the fancy-schmancy section of the shore?”
Tris laughs and pulls onto a side street as if he knows right where he’s going. “I guess you can say that.”
The bay comes into view in front of us. A restaurant, Pier 86, with a dock next to it. And boats everywhere. But no hotel in sight, which is where I’d assumed we were heading.
“This is really pretty.”
Tris pulls into an empty parking spot. I move to open my door but am stopped by a strong hand pulling my arm toward him. And then Tris kisses me like he’s never kissed me before. So slow, and deep, it’s like I’m being willfully consumed. His hand slides up my leg, his fingers under the hem of my shorts, as the kiss deepens.
It’s the kind of kiss you share after saying I love you for the first time. After narrowly avoiding a breakup.
After realizing something big, really big, just happened between you.
