Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
PRESTON
It didn’t mean anything.
Not when Harmony came clenched around him and Preston thought he might actually die from how spectacular it felt. Not when she insisted they stay in, order Thai food, and afterward pulled him down on top of her again. Not when she dozed off in the middle of talking nestled against him and he was so fucking content, even knowing he never slept the first night in a new place. Not when he actually slept great, not when he woke to her arm flung over him, not when she stirred and smiled up at him a little sheepishly and kissed him like it was the only thing on her to-do list for the whole day.
Not even when he’d almost let it slip, the night before, how it felt like he’d wanted her for even longer than he’d known her, how she made him gladly ready to break all his rules.
And certainly not when she rose from the bed to shower, bare assed, and over her shoulder asked if he was coming.
She was such a menace and she knew it and he loved it. But, he reminded himself as he climbed out of her bed, this was still only for now, short term, until she left. He was going to get that through his head. And while he worked on that, he was going to enjoy the best goddamn shower of his entire life.
She was drying her hair when he went to put on his glasses, resting beside a thick book on the bedside table. “You know this is from the Santa Barbara Library?”
Worry pinched her brow. “Sorry, this too loud?” She wasn’t using the small hotel dryer still clipped to the wall, but her own that looked sleek and modern and probably expensive, like a spaceship.
He waved The Oleander Sword at her. “This has got to be overdue.”
Harmony gave a vague, bright smile and half-shouted, “Yeah, be my guest!”
He gave up and was halfway through the second chapter, sitting on the edge of the bed, when she was done getting ready. “There’s yogurt in the fridge, if you don’t want to wait.” She invited herself into his lap. “Or we could go get breakfast?”
“I think we’re firmly into brunch territory at this point.” He set the book down, because Harmony was kissing his neck and he intended to savor every moment with her and also his brain might have sort of shorted out when her tongue slid into his ear. He cleared his throat. “Where should we go? Do you still need more places for the festival?”
She stopped kissing him, which was too bad, and rested her forehead against his neck. “I have a confession.” That sounded worse. Preston tensed, trying not to dig his fingers into Harmony’s back and thigh where he held her. “I did need to find vendors, but I may have asked you along, after you signed the lease, because I wanted to keep seeing you and wasn’t sure how to ask.” She started kissing him again, quickly.
He exhaled, half sigh of relief, half reaction to her touch. “Ah yes, Harmony Hale, famous shrinking violet.” More like a Venus flytrap, the way she was drawing his earlobe between her teeth. His fingers definitely clenched into her a bit.
A puff of breath warmed his neck as Harmony made an embarrassed sound. “I don’t actually date that much? Too busy with work. I guess I’m not very good at it, outside of, like, work functions.”
“I think you’re good at everything. Especially—” He turned his head, capturing that wicked mouth of hers and drawing her into a long kiss. When they broke apart for breath, he could feel her smug smile against his lips. “—annoying librarians.” Her eyes glinted, and she fucking licked his face.
“Oh, my god!” He shoved her off him, tackling her onto the bed.
“What?” She laughed. “You liked it last time!”
He planted a kiss to her temple. “If you’re that hungry, then, yes, let’s go to brunch.” He was certainly going to spend any time he could with her.
They stopped by his place so he could throw on some clean clothes. He and Harmony had tried so many different restaurants in the area, they had never just gone to the diner on Main Street. The normal hum of conversations and clatter of silverware greeted them, along with a waitress carrying a tray through to the back. “Hey, Preston. Any table.”
He led Harmony to one near the windows, far from the noise of the kitchen.
Harmony sat across the little booth from him. “It’s weird how everyone knows everyone in a small town.”
He shrugged. “Jules worked with my mom.”
“Here?” At his nod, she raised her brows. “Guess there are a lot of reminders of her everywhere.”
Preston glanced around, thinking of afternoons doing homework at an empty table, his mom ruffling his hair as she rushed past. “Memories.”
“That’s nice.” Harmony twisted her napkin. “I’ve kind of kept on the move, since my dad, well.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.” The urge to somehow help, to ease the hurt in her voice, kicked in, but there was nothing to say to make that better.
“Yeah. When I was seventeen.” She smiled weakly, drawing in a long breath through her nose. “Too much hard living.” She seemed to notice she was destroying her napkin and dropped it. “But I have this to remind me of him.” She held up her pinkie, where she always wore a gold ring delicately formed like three notes stacked up on top of each other, beside a sharp symbol.
“For Harmony?”
Her wavery smile grew. “Yeah. No one’s ever noticed that.”
Jules swung by then for their drink order, and Harmony reached for his hand and gave his fidget ring a spin. “I like yours too. Makes me think of you. I feel like I can always see your wheels turning.”
He stared at her hand holding his over the table. It was such a simple thing, something everyone was always doing at other tables, but felt almost unreal happening to him after so long.
“Even when you’re quiet,” she said. Then her fingers contracted. “Oh, sorry, do you not want to, like, be public?”
He grabbed her hand back. “Don’t be silly. Also, we’ve been going out together for weeks, the small-town gossip ship has sailed.”
She squeezed his hand. “Good, don’t want anyone else trying to move in on my territory.”
That sort of lit him up inside to a dangerous degree, and he covered by joking, “Yeah, women were knocking down my door before you scared them away.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you questioning my excellent taste?”
“You’re right, watch out, one’s behind you right now with a butter knife!” Her low chuckle was so familiar already and far too soothing.
He scratched at his stubbly jaw with his free hand. “Small towns.” Where everyone knew him—as the odd one, or the sad one, or if he was lucky, the helpful one. Not the one they wanted to date. “Hard to meet someone who doesn’t remember your awkward stage.”
Harmony blinked innocently. “Oh, were you planning on growing out of it?”
He made a very funny face and gave her hand a gentle shake as Jules came back with their coffee and tea and a pointed, maybe pleased, look at their hands and took their order. While they waited, he told Harmony, who was still playing with his ring, “It’s for stimming. Helps process sensory overload. Worries. Whatever.”
She looked up at him, considering. “What are you worried about right now?”
So many things. That he was falling far too fast to catch himself. That he liked it when she said or did ridiculous things she didn’t mean, that snapped him out of worrying and let him just be in the moment. With her. But he couldn’t tell Harmony, pouring packets of sugar and creamer into her coffee now, all of that. It was too soon, he knew. You didn’t tell women stuff like that after one night. And there wasn’t even going to be a later for them when he might get to. “Lacey.” That was always true. “If she’ll do okay on her own today.”
Harmony nodded and blew on her coffee. “Do you think she wants you there? I could drop you off.”
“No.” He ripped open a sugar packet and dumped it into his tea. After years of pretty serious clinginess, Lacey wanted friends her age, not to have her brother always hovering around. “Mason’s a good kid and Sarah’s great. Lacey’s just had a rough time at school and can’t always get across what she needs to.” He added milk and stirred. “I might pace a trench in the kitchen floor until she’s home. Fidgets can only do so much.”
“Do you want to hang out till then? I’m very good at distracting people.”
“No shit.” He took a sip of his tea, thinking of the week he’d spent trying not to ignore all his work because she was there. “You should put that on your résumé.”
She tossed back her hair. “There’s no room after listing all my other talents.”
“Right, because you contain multitudes. Distracting librarians. Inspiring local youth. Stealing library books.”
Harmony lifted her mug like she could hide behind it. “Oops. It was too good to leave when I headed up here from the Santa Barbara Bowl. Good thing late fees are passé. I’ll mail it back.” She sipped her coffee. “Guess I picked up some bad habits, growing up the way I did.”
“Rich people are weird.”
Her coffee must have still been too hot, because she coughed a little. “Right.”
She set it down, looking a bit uncertain, and he realized he hadn’t actually answered. Because of course he wanted her to stay, as long as she could. “What do you want to do this afternoon, then?”
So after bacon and eggs and a comically tall pile of waffles and whipped cream, they went out on the town green and collapsed in a food coma on a blanket from Harmony’s trunk, and eventually Harmony decided they would scroll through each other’s playlists and share a memory about any song the other asked about.
“‘Atlantis’?”
“Studying my brains out first year of grad school. ‘High Hopes’?”
“My first job.”
“Which was?”
“Stressful.” Her finger didn’t stop scrolling as she looked down at his phone, lying on her stomach beside him. “‘Master Pretender’?”
Preston dropped his forehead to the blanket. “Trying to learn it on piano to impress a girl. My turn,” he said over her chuckle. “‘Thunderstruck’?”
“My dad blasted AC/DC while he worked. Why are all of these titles in Italian?”
He smirked and said (because by now he suspected Harmony wouldn’t give him shit about it, or at least would give him shit while doing something surprising herself, which he was definitely interested in seeing), “è la lingua della musica.”
Her mouth fell open. “Stop it. You speak Italian.”
“Certo, un po’. Da mia madre. Ma principalmente perché lo usiamo nella musica.”
Harmony narrowed her eyes. “Hmm. I’m gonna assume that was something incredibly romantic.”
Preston’s brain scrambled for any scrap of the Merini he’d read the past winter, but Harmony was muttering over his phone, “And why do you have so much Taylor Swift on here?”
“Lacey’s obsessed.”
“Okay, but ‘All Too Well’?”
“What about you, with all these show tunes?” He nudged his shoulder into hers.
“I was a theater kid.”
He looked out over the grass, where others were picnicking or skateboarding or falling asleep with open books shading their faces from the sun. “That explains so much.”
She rolled onto her side, propping her hand on her hip like a lounge singer on top of a piano or Cleopatra carried on a palanquin or something, even in her jeans and T-shirt. “Star of my high school musical.”
“Well, I don’t believe that,” he said flatly. “You simply lack the presence.” She kicked him gently in the calf and rolled back over, a strip of tantalizing skin showing where her shirt rode up.
It wasn’t his turn, but he wanted to know more. Sometimes she was so effusive with stories, but they were often about rock stars or music execs, not so much herself. “Who’d you play? Sandy in Grease ? Maria in Sound of Music ?”
“Ha.” At his questioning look, she explained, like it was obvious, “They don’t cast the fat girl as the ingenue.”
“That’s bullshit. Your voice is incredible.”
“Which is why I played Mama Rose.” She sighed dramatically. “Always the mother, never the future burlesque star.”
He was about to tell her no one could compete with her striptease the night before when something on her playlist caught his eye. “Oh, no. Harmony. I’m so disappointed.”
“What?” She actually sounded worried, and he fought the smile off his face as he held up her phone.
“Not Andrew Lloyd Webber.”
She tsked. “ Superstar is the exception.”
“All the Sondheim redeems you.”
“Such a snob. God, yours is just, like, half classical music. What’s so great about Beethoven, anyway?”
“I mean, if you want to know, I got an entire degree that would allow me to explain.”
“Please don’t. Hold on, you didn’t major in, like, books?”
He snorted. “Saved that for grad school. Hence the all-night study sessions.” Undergrad had been easy compared to that. He’d spent as much time helping Will, who was dyslexic, pass his heavier classes, as studying himself.
A breeze played across the lawn, drawing a strand of Harmony’s hair across her face as she scanned his playlists some more. “And a ton of obscure British singer-songwriters. Wait, you have, like, every Legend Watts album on here—oh!” She held out his phone. “Text from Sarah.”
He dropped her phone on the blanket to grab his.
“Everything okay?”
He scanned the message. “Yeah.” His shoulders relaxed. “She says they’re having fun, and can she take them for ice cream before dropping Lacey off.”
“Sounds like a success.”
He texted Sarah back that it all sounded good. “Better head home soon.” The wind ruffled through the red and white streamers taped to the fountain’s statue to celebrate the Bobcats’ win against Heraldale. Preston slid an elbow out so he could lean over and brush the hair back from Harmony’s face, and left his hand there, cupping her cheek, thumb stroking over her cinnamon-sugar freckles. Because that was something he was allowed to do now. Because they were dating. “Dani’s getting busy prepping for her show. Not sure when I’ll have the chance to take you to dinner—”
“Oh, you took me to dinner ,” she said with an eyebrow waggle.
“Is that supposed to be an innuendo? What does that even mean?”
She turned her head and kissed the edge of his palm. “I just say stuff, see what sticks.”
“But I hope we can still see each other, even for a quick bite or something—” She nipped at his thumb before he could pull away. He shook his head, resigned. “Should have seen that one coming.”
She rolled onto her back, arms bent behind her head, basking in the sunshine. “I don’t mind mini-dates, even if it’s not for the festival.”
“Yeah?” The sunlight gilded the fringe of her lashes, illuminated her skin until she glowed, and that warmth seemed to spread right through his chest. She was so goddamn lovely.
“It’s been fun.”
“Yeah.” Fun. They were having fun. And fun was good. Really, really good. Much better than bad, or even all right.
Even if part of Preston knew he simply wasn’t built for it. That the fact that he’d gone to her hotel meant he already felt for Harmony far more than he’d admitted even to himself, that he felt more, too much, growing within him every time she touched him or made him laugh or shared another precious piece of herself.
That it all meant entirely too much.
To him, at least.