A soft breeze rustles Chloe’s hair, and I reach out, not even thinking, and tuck her hair behind her ear. I get zapped with an electric shock when my fingers grace over her flesh, and Chloe jumps slightly.
“Maybe you’re a merman.” She reaches up and puts her hand over mine.
“What?” I ask with a chuckle.
“It’s something from a made-for-TV movie I used to watch when I was a kid. He shocked people when touched them.”
“I think I remember that one.” I flip her hand over and lace our fingers together. Stepping in close, my heart is in my throat. I could tell her now, put it all out on the line, and see what happens from here. There’s a chance it could all crash and burn around me, but there’s a chance it won’t.
And I need to take it.
“Should we get going?” She pulls her hand out of mine. Is that an unspoken answer to my question?
“Yeah. It’s, uh, getting late.” I bring my hand back and run it through my hair, needing to calm my heart and my dick down. Chloe holds my gaze for a second and then turns, opening the door and getting in the car.
“Fuck,” I mumble to myself as I go around the car. No one has ever made me unnerved like Chloe does. When it comes to women, I’m always calm, collected, and never strikeout.
But I’ve never cared like this before. Chloe has always been everything to me, even if I didn’t see it. Losing Chloe once hurt bad enough. Losing her again, knowing that she never wants to be anything more than what we are now…it will fucking destroy me.
“Do you mind if I roll my window down?” she asks as we pull out of the driveway.
“Not at all. We can open the sunroof too.”
“I’d like that.” She turns, smiling, and reaches up to push the button to open the sunroof at the same time I do. Her fingers slide over my wrist and—dammit—just that little bit of feeling her skin against mine sends a jolt through me. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I press the button and the glass slides back. “I don’t get to use this all that often.”
“In California, you would.” She gathers her hair in her hand and moves it behind her back, keeping it from blowing in the wind.
“For sure. You don’t get much rain there, do you?”
“No, we go through drought seasons, and it seems like every year gets worse. The wildfires came really close to my house two years ago. It was terrifying.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“I was more worried about Spartan. I camped out at the barn for four nights, too scared to leave him and the other horses. We kept a really close eye on everything, of course, and had emergency plans to load up the horses and drive to another barn miles away. Thankfully, it didn’t come to it.”
“I think I’d rather take the snow and cold over fires.”
“It’s a trade-off, but it’s not like fires happen regularly, like snow here in the winter.”
“True, but snow doesn’t burn your house down or risk killing you from smoke inhalation.”
She gives me a pointed stare. “Thanks. As if the thought of another fire didn’t scare me enough already. Want to remind me about earthquakes too?”
“I was going to save that one until right before you fall asleep. That way you can lay in bed wide awake worrying about being buried alive in rubble.”
“You’re late to the party. I’ve already had that nightmare over a dozen times.”
“Then I’ll remind you how you’re more likely to be robbed after a natural disaster.”
“I need to find my own island to live on—and don’t even talk to me about tidal waves,” she says, and I laugh. I turn off the rural road my parents live on and get on the main road that runs through downtown Silver Ridge. We have to go around the lake to get to Chloe’s dad’s house, which adds a bit of time to our drive.
The actual town of Silver Ridge looks big on a map because of the lake, but population-wise, it’s a small town. I felt claustrophobic here in my youth, which is almost humorous now considering I live on the sixth floor of my apartment building in downtown Chicago.
Chloe sticks her hand out the window, feeling the air as we speed down the road. She lets go of her hair, letting it wildly fly around her face for a few minutes, a smile on her face the whole time. When I slow to go through the few blocks of Silver Ridge’s downtown, she closes her window halfway and combs her hair with her fingers.
“Are you cold?” I ask, seeing the goosebumps on her arm.
“I get chilled easily.”
“It’s like eighty degrees out.”
“It’s seventy-six,” she corrects, pointing to the temperature displayed on screen. “You’re off by a whole four degrees. And I thought you were supposed to be good at math since you’re calculating how much medication to give someone.”