Page 40 of One Wrong Move

“They do?” he asks. “You seem perfectly rational to me.”

I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not.”

“I told you, I like women who surprise me,” he says. “You certainly do, Harp. All the time. Now come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“Already?”

He downs the last of his drink. “I’m not going to flirt with a random woman tonight, Harper. Not even to make you happy.”

A flush creeps over my cheeks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to?—”

“Don’t apologize,” he says, and that wide smile is back. “It’s just, I’m enjoying your company far too much to make small talk with a stranger.”

The compliment makes me blink a few times before I smile back at him. “You do?”

Something glitters in his eyes. “Oh yes,” he says. “Now tell me about this recent madness of yours.”

Nate

The threat of rain hangs in the air on Sunday. It casts London into grayness that feels far too familiar by now and leaves the air humid. The streets are calm and quiet without the weekday traffic, and I let my foot hit the gas harder than I’m usually able to. Something inside of me relaxes as the speed increases.

Harper is silent in the passenger seat.

She’s dressed in an athletic getup—tights and an insulated jacket—but her hair is down. It falls in soft golden waves over her shoulders and is pushed back with a black headband.

A black headband that looks like the one she wore the first time I saw her at that college bar.

I glance over at her. In so many ways, she looks just like she had that night. Curious. Pensive. Gazing out the windshield, her mouth just slightly parted, hands clasped in her lap.

In other ways… everything has changed since then.

I tap my thumb against the steering wheel. I hadn’t seen her yesterday. Work had occupied most of my day, and she’d been doing errands. By the time I got home from an event I couldn’t get out of, the living room was dark and the door to her bedroom shut.

I walked right by it on my way up to my floor. Ignored the slight tingle in my hands, clasping them into fists at my side.

What she’d said at the bar…

It confirmed the suspicions I’d harbored since the night she, wearing her black headband, met Dean and their love story began. Suspicions that I could never discern from my own jealousy, but ones I couldn’t dismiss, either.

That she was wasted on him.

And then, she’d described the kind of woman she thought I wanted.

Harper looks out her window. “We’re not going very far?”

“No,” I say. “It’s close by.”

Her voice turns amused. “And I’m still not allowed to know what we’re doing?”

“You know it’s something off your list,” I say.

“Yes, but there are thirty things on it,” she says. “I still haven’t decided whether I’m okay with you having memorized everything on it in a span of a second.”

That makes me grin. “How long do you think it’ll take to make your decision?”

“I’m not sure. I think it depends on what we’re going to do today.”

I nod and hide my smile. “Of course.” The list had been a jumbled mess of highs and lows. From archery to staying out all night, to going to a tarot card reading, to having a threesome.

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