The Virgin Society Collection

5. Some More Some Time

5

SOME MORE SOME TIME

Bridger

I’m not thinking of her that way.

I’m not thinking of my business partner’s daughter like that. I’m not feeling a thing for her.

But for the first time ever, across the living room, drinking my iced tea, I am.

I’m looking at her like…she’s not his daughter.

I’m noting her, every detail. Lush chestnut hair, pink lips, a delicate throat. Pale skin.

Her green eyes are flecked with gold. Have they always been flecked like that? Has her skin always been so creamy? Her red sweater hugs her chest, and her jeans meld to her legs. She’s tall in those black boots with a zipper up the side.

Was she always tall? Always lithe?

I don’t even know. I probably shouldn’t know.

But I know this—my chest is painfully tight, like someone’s turning a key in a jack-in-the-box, over and over. Tightening me. This feeling can’t be healthy. This must be heartburn. Or a panic attack?

Except it’s not.

It’s something else.

Something all too familiar.

Something I know well. Something I shouldn’t feel for Ian’s daughter.

I desperately want to be unaffected by her clever reply, I absolutely want to let the hopeful note in it slide right off me like I do a thousand comments about a thousand things every day. But she’s no longer the girl on the bike who I took to the ER one day last summer.

She’s Harlow.

A…woman who likes the same obscure musical I do. A woman who chose her major for the same reason I did. A woman who isn’t fooled by bullshit at parties.

I shouldn’t say another thing to her.

I really shouldn’t.

But the words take shape in my mouth as curiosity fills all my cells, and I do it anyway.

I toss back the next line in the Ask Me Next Year song, a question. “Wasn’t it time?”

What are they even asking about in the song? What’s the it ? I don’t know. I don’t actually care. All I know is that the song makes me feel. Makes my chest ache.

Harlow looks up from her book, her lips parted. Her eyes are full of intrigue.

Then, like we’re tangoing, she takes the next step, speaking the next line in the song. “Isn’t it now?”

I heat up.

Stop. Just stop.

Instead, I ask, “What if it’s all a dream?”

She exhales, a long, lovely note of excitement. Her cheeks flush pink. In a whisper, she utters, “But he can’t be mine.”

Words to live by.

I tear myself away from these forbidden thoughts. I swallow down my desire. “Yeah, so that’s a good musical,” I say roughly, then I make my excuses, saying I have an early run along the East River.

What the hell? Am I actually explaining my schedule?

“Have a good one,” she says, and I bolt.

I walk home, counting the steps until thoughts of her are buried so deep you’d need an archaeological dig to excavate them.

I hope.

I fucking hope.

A few days later, I’m running along the East River Greenway. My nose is ice, and my hair is as cold as a tundra.

But it’s a habit. So I go, and I run, and I refuse to think of things I shouldn’t think of.

Of people I shouldn’t picture.

Instead, I review the day ahead. I have a meeting with Ian at the office at nine-thirty. We need to discuss the plans for our newest Sweet Nothings spin-off— Afternoon Delight . Then, I have a conference call with our London office. After that, I’ll dive into scripts, maybe make some more progress on the Fontaine situation.

Somewhere around Eighteenth Street, a voice calls out from behind me, mingling with the sound of pedals pumping and wheels whooshing. “Good morning.”

And just like that, the ice age ends. Heat zaps down my spine.

I turn my gaze, slow my running pace. She slows her bike too, then stops near me. I pull up short.

Harlow smiles my way, sensual and indulgent. “Who would have thought you owned something besides pants and perfect business shirts?” she says, her breath imprinting on the morning air.

I try to keep the tone light. Keep it safe. “Can’t burn off all those olives wearing a dress shirt,” I joke. Joking has to help.

“Maybe don’t burn them off,” she says, then shudders as she tugs her sleeves down lower. Thank god it’s too cold to talk for long. “I can bring you some more sometime.”

Olives. She’s talking about olives. But she’s also talking about more. Momentarily, I let myself forget who she is. I let the ties that bind us fade away.

“Castelvetrano, please,” I say.

“Noted,” she says with a devilish smirk that turns into a smile.

I can’t linger on it. I have to run. “Bye, Harlow,” I say, then I resume my jog.

She pumps the pedals then pulls ahead of me. “Bye, Bridger,” she calls out as she rides well past me, and my name on her lips sounds too good in the cold New York morning.

Too good to mention to her dad, in fact.

A few hours later, when I see Ian, I don’t mention my encounter with his daughter.

My pulse isn’t surging anymore, so why bring it up?

I don’t say a word when it happens again a few weeks later.

I’m cruising by the United Nations headquarters, listening to Cole Porter, when a flash of silver blurs past me.

Then she slows, whips around, doubling back. She finishes her three-sixty by my side, wheeling along. “Hi, morning runner,” she says from her perch on her silver Trek.

Is she here on purpose? For me?

The possibility thrums enticingly through me. But that makes no sense. Harlow couldn’t be interested in me. Harlow’s younger than me, the world at her feet. It’s foolish to think she’s intentionally riding at the same time as me on a path that runs up and down the city. Bumping into her is simply a New York coincidence. A city of eight million breeds coincidence. That is all.

“Good morning… rider ,” I say.

She turns the wheels slowly, keeping pace with me as I go. “You don’t miss a run, do you?”

“I don’t know, Harlow. Maybe I missed the last few weeks,” I say, almost, almost suggestively.

Ah, fuck.

That was a flirting 101 mistake. Now she’ll know I’m aware that I haven’t seen her. She’ll know I’ve noticed when she’s here, and I’ve noticed, too, when she’s not.

When I shouldn’t notice her at all.

“You missed your morning workout?” She tsks me. “Such a truant.”

Glad she didn’t latch onto my subtext. “Yes. That’s me,” I say lightly. Friendly.

“Hmm. I’m not sure you’re a truant, though,” she says, like she’s musing on who I am. “I bet you’re here every morning. On the dot. Like a religion.” She takes a beat, her eyes twinkling. “Am I right?”

She’s more than right. She’s also more than friendly. I think. “Why do you say that?”

“You seem…let’s just say, the type ,” she says, her tone confident, like a woman who knows what she wants.

The type. She’s already pegging my type. Okay, let’s do this. “What’s my type?”

“The type of guy who works out every morning,” she retorts, and a prickle of awareness slides down my spine. The sensation of being…known.

Then her gaze slides to my right arm. I’m wearing a long-sleeve workout shirt, but the cuffs are pushed up, showing some of my ink. “You have a tattoo,” she says, pleased, like she’s just unearthed a discovery.

“Yeah,” I say, and this feels so personal. Not the ink—the talking about it. I’m not sure if I should talk about it with her. Hell, I’m not sure about anything right now, especially how to volley with Harlow. Conversing with Ian’s daughter alone is a game, and I don’t have the rulebook. I’m playing in the dark, so I improvise. “Don’t you go to college downtown?”

“I do. Are you asking why I’m riding here, along the East River, instead of near where I live?”

Jesus. Could I be more transparent that I’m fishing for intel? Like, have you been looking for me every morning like I’ve been looking for you? I need to get a fucking handle on myself around her. “I guess I am asking that,” I admit, but I stop there. Giving nothing more away. I need to figure out the rules to this flirting game, stat.

“I don’t like traffic. Don’t you remember?” But she’s really asking, How could you forget?

That was shortsighted of me. She broke her ankle in Manhattan traffic seven months ago. I can’t believe I thought she was riding here for any other reason than emotional necessity. “Have you avoided the streets on your bike since last summer?”

“When I can,” she says, tone straightforward, not shirking away from the accident, just dealing with some kind of PTSD from that crash. “I don’t want to take a chance.”

“I’m sorry, Harlow. That’s rough.”

“It’s okay. Life happens, right?” There’s more to that remark, much more to unpack.

For now, I give a simple answer so I don’t make another mistake with her. “It sure does.”

“But it’s safer here anyway,” she says, her lips curving up again, a hint of a smile teasing me. “Because what are the chances a man in purple will save the day again?”

Her smile blooms fully.

The temperature in me spikes. I breathe out hard. Harder than before. I wish it were the exertion. I wish I weren’t thinking these thoughts about her.

And yet, my mind is wandering to so many places. My eyes will give it away.

I tear my gaze away from her and quietly say, “Let’s hope you don’t need that again.”

There. That’s…safe.

And I can look at her once more. When I do, she’s glancing down at the phone in its holder on her handlebars. “I have French class in thirty minutes,” she says.

I knit my brow. “I thought you were fluent.”

“I am. But there’s always something to learn so I’m taking French lit now.”

“You know Afternoon Delight takes place there? In Paris,” I add, in case she doesn’t follow the details of our Sweet Nothings spin-off.

She’s all Mona Lisa as she says, “I know, Bridger. I know.”

I heat up again. Is it January or June? “Of course you know,” I say.

A playful shrug. “But French lit waits for no one.”

“French lit,” I say, with a low whistle of admiration. “Enjoy.”

“ J’aime toujours la littérature ,” she says, and even though I don’t know French, I get the gist of her reply.

I also like the way the words sound on her tongue.

Something I shouldn’t like at all.

She tosses one more smile my way—I tell myself it’s just a friendly one—then presses hard against the pedals and blurs off.

I should look away as she rides. Stare at the river. Gaze at the buildings. But I watch Harlow until she blends into the rest of New York on a cold morning in late January.

When I walk into McCoy’s restaurant in midtown that afternoon to discuss Afternoon Delight with Ian, I feel like I have the start of a secret.

A dangerous one that would destroy our business if anything came of it.

Good thing my poker face is legendary.