Chapter 3
THREE
His thumb strokes over my wrist once before he catches himself and lets go.
“You coming?” Mia asks, her gaze bouncing between us.
“Give me a sec,” I tell Miles, and then I pull Mia aside until we’re out of earshot. “I’m gonna stay.”
She raises a brow. “With Miles? Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Unless there’s something I don’t know…”
Mia darts a look over my shoulder at Miles, still sitting at the bar, before returning her attention to me. “From what I’ve heard from my brother and Dom, Miles isn’t exactly boyfriend material—”
“Great. I’m not looking for a boyfriend,” I cut in. Not when I’ve got an album to record and lyrics to write.
It’s not the first time I’ve made this choice. It’s easier this way. No wondering if I should’ve called sooner, no guilt when I canceled plans because inspiration hit or a gig ran late. I’ve never been good at splitting my focus. Music has always won.
“He’s the one-night type,” she continues. “Doesn’t-do-repeats type.”
Something about that doesn’t fit the awkward-yet-charming man I’ve known for less than a day. But that’s better. No complications. No distractions.
“I’m okay with that,” I tell her.
She studies my face, then pulls me in for a quick hug, muttering one last warning. I walk her to Dominic’s car, double-parked out front, then head back inside to Miles.
“Everything okay?” he asks as I slide onto the barstool.
“Peachy.” My lips tip up. “Should we get out of here?”
“Where were you thinking?” He takes a swig of his drink. His stubble is a shade or two darker than his light brown hair. It’s the perfect amount, enough to prickle my thighs when he’s—
“I don’t know, wherever you normally take women,” I blurt.
He pulls my chair closer, gaze darting over my features as if looking for my bluff. Then a deep laugh huffs out of him.
The sound and his proximity warm me from the inside out, heat creeping up my neck and staining my cheeks.
“You’re—” His eyes flick between mine. “Something,” he settles on, quiet enough to almost get lost in the noise of the bar.
“Something good?”
He swings an arm over the back of my chair, bringing us even closer. “Guess we’ll see.”
It doesn’t feel like a line. But then again, the good ones never do.
“Why don’t we stay a bit longer?” His hand stills, like the words surprise him.
“All right.” I’m reaching for my notepad before I can talk myself out of it. Scribbling a note about only one night and somethings, while making sure it’s out of Miles’s view.
“What’re you writing?” He grins. “Thought we established you’re not a reporter.”
“Sorry.” My gaze flicks up, but I keep writing. “It’s rude, I know. My mama always tells me so. It’s just when the inspiration hits, I’ve got to put pen to paper.”
He nods, and the way he’s looking at me has me blurting the truth. “It’s been hard to find the right words recently.”
It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. Everyone asks—my manager, musicians back in Nashville, my family—and I keep saying, “It’s coming along.” But it’s not. With my first studio session only days away, I need things to start clicking into place.
When the words do come, they’re like a skittish stray. I have to grab them before they bolt. And the ones I do catch? They’re scraggly little things that need more love and attention than I know how to give.
“I didn’t realize you wrote your own songs,” Miles says. “They only showed you doing covers on You’re The One.”
“You watched the show?” I tuck my notepad into my purse with a promise to resist the urge to pull it out again. To hold the words and feelings and examine them later.
He grins. “Fox and Mia had weekly viewing parties. That’s why you looked so familiar.”
I’m used to being recognized. I signed up for it. The whole reason I did the show was to launch my music career. But Miles is the first person I’ve wished could just… not know. Who could meet me without the show already telling him who I am.
That version isn’t fully me, not really. On camera, or let’s be honest, in real life, people only see what you let them, the parts that feel safe to share.
Does he see the TV version now or me?
I angle toward him. “What’d you think of it?”
“It was… entertaining.” He drums his fingers on the back of my chair. “It suits you.”
“What does? Reality TV?” I shift in the chair until my shoulder bumps his arm.
“No.” He clears his throat. “The spotlight.”
God, I hope he’s right. It’s what I’ve been chasing for as long as I can remember.
“I have an idea.” He stands and holds a hand out. I let him tug me to my feet, and he steers us toward a booth tucked in the back corner of the bar.
“Be right back.” He gives my hand a quick squeeze before walking off, then returns a minute later with a long rectangular box.
“Scrabble?”
He slides into the seat opposite me. “You’re looking for words, aren’t you?”
My heart does a little flip. Quickly followed by Mia’s whispered words: have fun, but don’t expect anything beyond a night. That’s all he does.
“I know you wanted to take on the professional pickleballer, but will you settle for Scrabble?” Miles gives me a half-smile.
I snort. “Please tell me this isn’t your idea of foreplay.”
His foot loops around my ankle under the table. The simple touch makes goosebumps rise on my skin.
A quiet laugh escapes him as he leans in, and I meet him halfway across the table.
“Oh, honey,” he murmurs, his breath warm against my ear, “you’ve got no idea.”
He was right about turning Scrabble into seduction. Winning, though? Bless his heart.
One game turns into two, then three. Somewhere between the first word I laid on the board and now, hours have disappeared. I have no clue how late it is. All I know is, sitting here with Miles has felt anything but lukewarm.
“That’s not a word.” I eye his latest play.
“Quixotic?” He leans back, arms crossed. “It absolutely is.”
“Use it in a sentence.” I cross my arms to match his.
“You thinking you’re going to win this game is quixotic.”
My head tips back as laughter bursts out. Spending a night with Miles King is a more effective abs workout than Pilates. “What does it mean?”
“Exceedingly idealistic.” His lips twitch.
“Did you Google it when I went to pee?” I narrow my eyes, and he laughs, deep and guilty.
“You cheater!”
“You can’t prove anything,” he counters, that smug smile still in place.
“Still not going to save you from losing.” I lay down JEZEBEL across a triple word score with a flourish. “Again.”
He studies the board, then me. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.” The word I won the last round with.
“Competitive, are we?”
I tilt my head side to side, then take a sip of my water. “Not usually.”
“So, I bring it out in you?”
I hitch a shoulder. “Guess so. What’s the score?”
I’m confident in my victory. Still, I wait as Miles leans over the paper, tallying our points. His eyes flick up, one rogue curl falling over his forehead. “You won.”
“Ha!” I shoot out of my seat, arms raised, then lean against the table between us. “Are you ready to admit defeat yet?”
“Not competitive, huh?” There’s an amused smile on his lips. “One more.”
I fall back into the booth. “You don’t know when to quit.”
“Guess not.” He rolls up his sleeves, carefully folding the cotton into neat cuffs and exposing his corded forearms.
“What?” The tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth tells me I’ve been caught staring. Not that I was trying very hard to hide it.
“Nothing.” Just the completely inappropriate urge to lick your forearm.
“You sure? You looked like you had… thoughts.” He holds out the tile bag. “Ladies first.”
“Oh, I have thoughts.” I pick my seven letters, keeping my eyes on him.
I hand the bag over, and he digs in with a level of concentration wildly unnecessary for Scrabble. But considering he’s about to lose again, I can’t blame him.
“If I pull the Q, I’m walking out,” he mutters, choosing tiles one by one.
“You wouldn’t.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then back up to hold mine.
“No.” His voice drops. “You’re right.”
The words settle somewhere low in my stomach. Before I can decide what to do with that, the music dips, and the bartender announces last call.
“Already?” I glance around, surprised to find the bar nearly empty.
Miles cleans up the game, squaring the pieces inside the box until everything sits just right, then closes the lid.
I reach across the table and lay my hand over his where it rests on the box. “What do you want?”
His eyes dart to our hands before lifting to mine and holding. The chatter of the bar dulls to muffled noise, so when he murmurs, “Not to say goodnight,” it sounds loud in my ears.
The cold hits the second we step outside, sharp enough to steal my breath. Miles tugs a Saints hat from his coat pocket and drops it on my head.
“Riverwalk,” he says, like it’s nonnegotiable. “First-day-in-Chicago requirement.”
“Is that so?”
“Absolutely. That and the Bean.”
I’m honestly shocked he didn’t steer us toward the first hotel we passed. After Mia’s warning about him being a one-night-stand guy, I expected a different kind of night. But his hand finds mine as we walk, and he points out buildings, giving me a personal tour of the city.
At this rate, the sun might come up before we make it to bed.
Would that still count as a one-night stand?
If he wasn’t rubbing slow circles into my palm or his shoulder didn’t keep bumping mine, I’d worry I’d misread the whole thing.
“You’re full of surprises.” I lean further into his side.
“Good, I hope?” He smiles.
“Guess we’ll see.” I echo his words from earlier tonight.
The riverwalk stretches out before us, city lights reflecting off the dark water. There aren’t many people out this late, just us and the sound of water lapping against concrete. Miles carefully steers me around a patch of ice, then keeps me close until we reach the railing.
I lean against the cold metal, and it seeps through my coat just enough to make me shiver.
Miles’s head tilts toward me. “So, is this a permanent move or a temporary one?”
“Temporary,” I say, and for the first time, it doesn’t bring me any comfort.
“How long are you here for?”
“If everything goes to plan? Six months.”
His chin dips, then he turns his gaze back to the river.
We haven’t talked too deeply about anything in particular. I figured that was by design. You don’t usually want to become attached to someone you’re only planning to spend one night with.
When the silence stretches between us, I fill it with, “Chicago’s different than I imagined.”
“Better or worse?”
“Better,” I admit.
He turns, his fingers grazing my temple as he adjusts my hat. Every tiny touch makes me greedy for the next one.
You know that saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?
I don’t know what the version is when you run into the same man twice in one day. But when the universe keeps pushing you together, resisting starts to feel less like willpower and more like stupidity.
And I’m not dumb enough to argue with fate.
Just dizzy enough to want more of whatever this is.
It’s the same feeling I used to chase as a kid—spinning in circles with my face to the sky until the head rush hit, and then I’d tip over laughing. That split second of pure euphoria right before you land on your ass.
I want to stay in that second, if only for a little longer.
My fingers itch for my notepad.
“C’mon.” Miles threads our hands together, tugging me along the riverwalk.
“You gonna tell me where we’re going?”
“Not yet.”
“You’re no fun.”
His grin says otherwise.
We walk for another ten minutes, maybe longer. Time feels slippery tonight. Somewhere between Michigan Avenue and Millennium Park, we stop trying to keep things light and start saying things that feel true.
He tells me about his teammates dragging him to games at Wrigley, about the best deep-dish place that’s “not tourist garbage,” about how hard it was to sit out last season when hockey’s always been the center of his life.
I tell him about Nashville, about singing songs in dive bars for crowds of twelve people, about my mama’s prediction that I’d “make it big someday, darling, just you wait.”
By the time we reach the Bean, my cheeks hurt from smiling.
The sculpture sits in the middle of the plaza, exactly like it looks in pictures: a giant, shiny, kidney-bean-shaped… thing.
“What do you think?” Miles asks.
Our reflections stretch and warp across the shiny surface, and I catch his head moving there before I turn to meet his actual gaze. “I like it.”
His breath clouds the air between us as he laughs. He pulls out his phone and snaps a picture, then tilts the screen toward me for approval.
I like that he captured this. It might be something I want to remember.
He pockets his phone but doesn’t step back. We’re close enough that I can see gold flecks in his eyes.
Miles reaches out, cradling my jaw. His thumb traces a slow path up my cheek, and I wish it were the heat of his skin instead of his leather glove.
“It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” he murmurs.
“Really? Don’t athletes have a reputation for—”
“Not that,” he huffs. “Well, actually... kind of that, too. Recently, at least—” His words cut off with a shake of his head.
I press my hand against his chest, and he steps closer. His gaze drops to my mouth and then back to my eyes.
“I’m gonna kiss you,” he rasps.
“I think I’d like that.”
I rise onto my toes, fingers curling into his coat as his arms wrap around my waist. He pulls me in until I’m flush against him. His heartbeat jumps through all the layers, or maybe that’s my own. I can’t tell anymore.
His lips meet mine, and my breath hitches.
The kiss starts slow, almost cautious. Then he deepens it, teasing me with his tongue, and a sound escapes me that I didn’t know I could make.
He slides a hand up to cradle the back of my head, holding me, and I forget about the cold entirely. Forget where we are. There’s just the warmth of his mouth, the scratch of his stubble against my chin, and the way he tastes faintly of hops and mint.
Time does that slippery thing again. Seconds, minutes, hours—I have no idea. I only know I never want this to end.
Eventually, he eases back. Just enough that our noses skim one another, breaths mixing in the frozen air.
The world tilts.
Sweet and dizzy.
This might be the falling-on-your-ass part, but I don’t care.
I want to spin a little longer.