Chapter 17
Summer was unspooling like an old-school film reel showing a montage of August highlights.
Dash at the screening, making the audience scream out whoops with every hair flip.
Going out with Shy and Aria and staying up until daybreak laughing over Aria’s newfound obsession with pirate romances.
Helping Dash try out recipes for an espresso chocolate chip cake that he swore would make me love the taste of coffee.
And through it all, golden hours bright with satisfaction every time I peeked at our socials and saw more comments, more follows, more shares, and more likes.
It took me and Aria issuing daily threats in the group chat we’d started to get Dash and Shy to stop fiddling with the window design and commit to a date when we could all get together to make it happen.
The day before burlesque night seemed like the perfect time, with Shy figuring that they could do the grand unveiling just before the event.
It was already dark, because we’d waited until the store was closed for the day.
As well as the decorative strings of lights hanging from the tree and the balcony, the courtyard was well supplied with the spotlights used for performances.
Dash was standing right under one of them as he propped up his tablet against a stack of paperbacks.
I probably wasn’t the only person who thought that Dash walked around looking like he was followed by his own personal spotlight—there was a certain kind of magic in the way his eyes caught the sunshine, and the way he’d learned to move so that his features were always artfully illuminated.
And that was on a normal day.
In the deep cobalt of a late summer evening, the spotlight shedding its brightness on his thick curls, the necklace I’d given him peeking out from above the neckline of his navy T-shirt, Dash looked like something I’d conjured from my wildest fantasies.
All of a sudden, I could feel every single one of my nerve endings.
Bumping lightly into his side didn’t soothe the bright sting of it—if anything, it only made it worse. You’d think that after weeks of hooking up, my desire for him would have faded at least a little. If anything, though, it seemed to grow stronger by the day.
And it was getting harder and harder to tell myself this was nothing but desire.
“I’m pretty sure this is what the inside of your head looks like,” I told Dash as we both gazed down at the drawing on his tablet. “All blooming flowers and shimmering fireflies and romance novels.”
“Are you comparing me to a summer’s day?” he asked, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “Because I’ll have you know, I’m a fall girlie all the way. Sweaters and candles and pumpkin spice and all.”
The thought of Dash in another season made my heartbeat speed up.
Not just at the thought of him in cuddly knits, cooking something ridiculously complicated like risotto or osso buco, but at the image that flashed through my mind of the two of us wrapped in blankets on his couch, watching the leaves drift by outside the window, the air around us heavily scented with cinnamon and cardamom.
It was a maybe sort of thought, the kind that I rarely let myself indulge in.
And I wasn’t going to this time, either.
Luckily, someone else coming into the garden chased—if you’ll excuse the pun—all those thoughts away. Chase could have been on a catwalk, the way he strutted out the back door and toward where Dash and I were standing.
“If it isn’t my favorite screenwriter,” he said. “Or should I say smutwriter?”
“Chase! I didn’t think you’d be back in town until tomorrow!
” I reached out to give him a hug, which he returned by lifting me off the ground and swinging me around.
Planning Lord Loving’s exploits meant that we’d been in constant touch over text, even though we hadn’t seen each other in person since that afternoon we’d celebrated getting away from the Times Square mob with cheap beer and chicken wings and dancing. “What are you doing here?”
“Dash sent out the bat signal and I came running when I heard his big emergency involved doing crafts. I’m great with my hands,” he said with a wink, making my gaze go automatically to his hands.
His fingers were full of rings—mostly thick silver ones that flashed in the low light with every movement, but there were a few colorful plastic ones in the mix, including a striped one that reminded me of a candy cane.
I put my own hands on my hips. “You do realize that was basically a challenge for me to add hand stuff to literally every single one of Lord Loving’s scripts.”
“Better watch out, Chase,” Dash said, “she’s gonna make you put your money where your mouth is.”
Chase smirked back at us. “Doesn’t sound sanitary, but I don’t kink shame.”
I groaned just as Shy and Aria joined us, Kitty Marlowe leading the way. The orange demon wound herself around Dash’s ankles, purring lovingly, then glanced at me with a look of extreme disdain before turning her attention to wreaking havoc on the art supplies.
“You couldn’t have waited for me to start talking about kinks?” Aria said, dropping a box of craft stuff on the table. “I’m shocked and hurt that you have so little regard for my feelings.”
“Don’t worry, baby, the evening’s just getting started,” Chase told her, leaning forward to drop a juicy kiss on her cheek.
It struck me with a small jolt how we’d all found Aria and Shy and Second Chance on our own, only to come together, all intertwined like the tapestry Dash had talked about.
Shy didn’t look impressed with our shenanigans. “Anyone else feel like they’re gonna need an edible to get through tonight? No? Just me?”
Chase clapped them on the back. “If you’re offering…”
It took us a while, but eventually we did manage to get our collective asses in gear and start working. The project manager in me had broken everything down, with Dash’s input, into small, manageable tasks. Believe it or not, I’d been good at my job once. You know, when I wasn’t yelling at clients.
Elaine had once told me that interior design was storytelling.
As she’d explained it to me, when you design someone’s space, you’re helping them tell the story of who they are—or who they think they are, or who they want to be.
And even though I hadn’t actually been designing, it had been my responsibility to set the designers up for success.
Once I’d figured out what Dash was trying to convey, it was easy enough to help him figure out how to do it.
Like we’d done when we’d started the Duke of Harding, he and I worked together to set a budget and source materials.
Shy put up the money, and Aria and Chase had signed up to help with the labor.
Aria had claimed that she had no useful artistic skills, so she was busy opening package after package of LED fireflies, which Dash wanted strung on nylon thread.
Chase turned out to be as skilled with a needle and thread as he was with his hands, so we’d set him up with two dozen amber-colored beads that Dash wanted sewn to the centers of the flowers he’d already made out of textured paper.
Seated next to Chase, I was cutting shapes out of the sheer fabric that would be fixed to the back of the paper flowers to filter the light shining from behind them.
“So you and Dash, huh?” Chase said as he speared a few beads through a large, blunt-tipped needle. “I shoulda seen it coming.”
“Because I’m so irresistible that Dash would have never been able to hold out against my many and varied charms?” I guessed.
“Yes, and also because you get him. I can see it in the scripts you write for him.” Chase paused for thought, holding the needle aloft.
“Most people don’t bother looking for anything beyond his surface.
They see his looks, and the way he interacts with the world, and they think that’s all they need to know about him.
You write for him like you’ve dived into the depths of him and found all the pearls and are bringing them up for everyone to admire. ”
“Trying so hard to not say anything too dirty about Dash’s pearls right now,” I remarked, to keep from showing how touched I was.
Chase shot me an amused glance. “You can run but you can’t hide, babe.
I can tell you like actually like him—not the way he looks or how jealous it’d make someone else to have him on your arm.
And knowing what I do about his past relationships, I can tell you right now that’s not as common as you might imagine. ”
“Shit,” I said softly.
If anyone didn’t deserve that, it was Dash, with his earnestness and his hair flips and his smiles that felt like sunshine.
Part of me wanted to rage out over all the people who’d made Dash feel anything less than amazing—and yet, another, more self-aware part of me knew that there was a high likelihood I could end up being one of them.
Not on purpose, maybe, but it was just a matter of time until I flailed so hard I hurt him.
Chase maneuvered the needle through a cluster of loose beads. “It’s probably not my place to speak on it. I worry, though, you know? Dash is good people. I’d hate to see him hurt like that again. Or at all.”
A laugh rang out from the other side of the garden, drawing my attention to where Aria was leaning in to feed Shy a bite of donut.
Romantic as it looked, the gesture was actually due to the fact that Shy’s hands were covered with sawdust, to the detriment of the yellow polish on their nails that matched the fried eggs printed on their shorts.
Dash was standing next to the pair, pretending to be mournful about the fact that no one was feeding him donuts. So I went over to the food table, broke off a piece, and pelted Dash with it just to make him laugh.
“Anything to please my man,” I said sweetly.