Chapter 25 #2
“Here.” He palms the wheel, turning into the driveway. “I remember. Walked you home and found my way back the next day.”
“With provisions, thankfully.” I press a palm to my chest. “Another mark on your chivalry tally.”
His hand flexes when he puts the car in park, the ghost of a smile twitching on his cheeks, but he takes a measured swallow, a thumb tapping against the steering wheel. “Thanks. For coming . . . and for playing a kids game.”
“Miller, I spend my days with dinosaur bones.” I widen my eyes. “Of course I came. I’ve never met a game for children I didn’t love.”
The smile turns corporeal. “And thanks for . . . talking to my aunt and uncle.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it, but I’d like to think he looks just a little lighter than he did before.
“Have you been avoiding them because of what people say? About how Matt died?” I ask softly, unbuckling my seat belt so I can shift to face him.
“Part of it was . . . guilt, yeah. But I haven’t .
. . I don’t know how to tell them I asked for a trade.
Asked to leave them . . . leave Matty’s memory behind.
” Miller exhales with a rueful shake of his head.
“At first, I didn’t . . . I didn’t think it would be a big deal.
Figured it’d never happen.” He knocks his head against the leather headrest. “But when Olson told me . . . it became real and the prospect of leaving”—he flinches, words spilling out like he’s rushing to correct himself—“became uh, even scarier than the idea of staying. That—that doesn’t seem so bad anymore. ”
For some reason, his eyes flit to me when he says it, but then they’re back on my empty driveway.
“You don’t have to take it though, do you?”
He worries at the leather stitching on the steering wheel. “Uh, technically—no. I have a no-trade clause. I don’t have to waive it if I don’t want to, but I, uh, asked for it and Olson is doing me a favour so it wouldn’t . . . look great.”
“What if you get traded somewhere you hate?” I lean across the console, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Like Florida?”
His mouth shifts with the hint of a grin again, and he bites down on his bottom lip before lifting his hand off the wheel. “I could veto it, or if I waived the clause and that’s where I ended up, I could refuse to report.”
“Would you do that?” I ask, propping my elbows up to rest my chin across interlaced fingers. I already know the answer, but I want to hear him say it—something certain and good about himself.
“Nah.” He shakes his head, a vehement and immediate no.
“That’s not . . . that’s not my style. It would suck to get traded somewhere I hated or didn’t want to play, and I know what people think about me.
That I . . . don’t care about anything. Cared too much about partying to notice that Matty .
. .” he trails off, hand flexing against the wheel again before he lets it go.
“But it’s . . . my job. The most serious thing in the world to me. ”
I shrug a shoulder, dragging out my words. “I don’t know—word on the street might have changed. I heard a rumour that Miller Colson-Burke takes things very seriously, actually.”
“Oh yeah, like what?” He turns to face me, slouching in his seat and leaning his head to rest against the window.
I try not to notice the way the muscles on his thighs tense under his shorts when his legs spread across the leather.
My nostrils flare with an exhale, and I start listing things off before my cheeks can overheat. “Jurassic Park trivia. Parking lot hot dogs. Aquarium strategy, and jellyfish. He’s a big friend to the invertebrates.”
“Big fan of the survival skills of the jellyfish, as it turns out,” he says, a lazy smile stretching up his face.
“Can I get that in writing?” I raise my brows. “Imani would be thrilled to know her two passions are intersecting—invertebrates and Major League Baseball.”
“What did, uh, Imani think about the job application?” His hand moves towards his hair, like he might tug on it, but he waves it through the air instead, clearing his throat. “I know you said the fossil collection wasn’t . . . the best. What about the ones she likes? The ones without the spines?”
“She’d fall over dead if she heard you referring to invertebrates as ‘the ones without the spines’.”
“Am I wrong?”
“No.” I laugh softly before I sniff, thinking of her desperate pleas through made-up taxonomic structures and warnings about herd behaviour before resignation lined her face. “She wants me to do what I think is right.”
The lines of Miller’s face shift too, indiscernible, but a muscle feathers in his jaw. “And what’s that?”
“I don’t know yet. The competition closes this week so.
” I shrug, offering him a tight smile but those other worries, the sprouts from seeds of things that were planted by a man not nearly as lovely as the one in the car with me, take hold.
It might not make sense to Imani or Miller.
But it might be my only change at something.
I didn’t get into school back then, and who’s to say I would now? “We’ll see if I get an interview.”
He nods, considering. Full lips part once, twice, three times before he jerks his head, seemingly landing on “They’d be stupid, not to interview you.”
“I’ll let them know the league’s sexiest shortstop says so.” I scrunch my nose, drumming my fingers along my chin.
A line digs between his brows. “Who told you about that?”
“Who do you think?” I give him a knowing look. “You should go. You fly out early tomorrow?”
His eyes find the clock, illuminated on the pristine dashboard, nestled between two ominous-looking speakers. “Uh, yeah. Early. But I’ll see you in a week? We can talk about . . . the cottage.”
Reaching out, I tap gently against the M stretching over the back of his hand. “I know it’s not the easiest place for you now.”
“Sure, yeah.” Nodding absentmindedly, his eyes find his tattooed hand, flexing out in space. He looks quiet again—but his gaze lifts to mine, and I think, some of the clouds rolling across an otherwise dark sky start to clear. “Think it’ll be okay, with you there.”
“I’m glad,” I murmur, and I’m not sure why I do it—I don’t know the last time I kissed anyone on the cheek, let alone the lips—but I lean forward, across the console to brush my mouth across the line of stubble carving along his cheek.
My lips meet warm skin for a fraction of a second before he shifts in his seat, and the edge of his mouth meets mine.
My heart explodes or maybe it dies or maybe my lungs stop working because even though it’s been longer than I can remember, I don’t think lips have ever felt like that against mine.
But he pulls back, smashing his head against the ridged frame of the window. His hand flies to the back of his head. “Fuck. Sorry—I thought you were going to hug me.”
I scramble back into my seat, my own hands finding my burning cheeks. “Oh my god—I’m so sorry—I was just trying to kiss your cheek, I—”
“It’s okay—it’s uh—good, great actually. You’re a great—”
“Cheek kisser?” I shriek.
Miller’s mouth parts, hand gripping the back of his head, still half slouched in his seat. “Uh, yeah.”
We stare until I start blinking too much and a sheepish smile steals across his face, his voice rough. “You can do it again, if you want. Maybe move a bit further east?”
“Shut up, Miller.” I scoff—some sort of great, sputtering thing. Reaching behind me, my hand finds the handle and I open the door, practically tumbling out. “Thank god I’m not going to see you for a week. This is worse than getting too drunk on champagne and lecturing you about extinction theory.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, I’ll need at least three business days to recover,” I tell him, swinging my legs out of the car and getting my feet onto ground that doesn’t feel like it’s sliding out from underneath me.
But when I stand, turning back to lean into the still-open car door, and see him sitting there, slumped against the driver’s side, hair mussed like he was raking his hands through it the entire time my back was turned, and I notice the way his thumb drags along the corner of his mouth I touched with mine—I don’t think I’m steady at all.
My breath catches, carving along the back of my throat, and I try to inhale.
Navy eyes find mine, and I think I might topple over.
“Good night, Miller,” I whisper.
He swallows. “Night, Ren.”
I turn, slam the door, and sprint up the steps to my townhouse without looking back, because there’s no way he wouldn’t be able to see the burning at the corner of my mouth from his.
I think, if Miller Colson-Burke ever really kissed me, my entire body would go up in flames.