Page 176 of Snap Shot

She hums. “Faking jokers say stuff like that. You don't fool me.”

“It's nothing like that.” Resting my forehead against hers doesn't seem to help ease her fear. “Tell me what you want. I can almost promise it's what I want too.”

The murmur is ignored. “I'll be humiliated, and it'll hurt worse than when you leave tonight. So go, Landon.” Indi shrugs my hand off. “Go, before we both do something we can't take back.”

I don't move. I don't want to take anything back. I want to move forward. To fall asleep with her in my arms and wake up next to her drooling on my shoulder. “You're breaking my heart, Indi.”

Her eyes hang closed. “Better yours than mine.”

“You don't mean that.”

She returns a soft snore in reply. My head and heart battle, not knowing for sure if that was genuine or not. I stand from my squat to cover her with a heavy comforter, then pad across the apartment to fill a glass of water for when she wakes.

I check the door lock as I leave, regret sobering in my gut. My head knocks into the back elevator wall.

Indi probably won't remember this whole conversation in the morning. And I don't know how I'm supposed to forget.

Chapter 44: Best Part of My Day

Indi

“This is so weird.”

Gabe, Sheena, and Bea's faces float within boxes on my iPad screen. The continent-wide blizzard halts my travel back to Ottawa and leaves us all in different cities: Gabe stranded on the West Coast, Sheena in Chicago, and me in Brampton with my parents.

“There's a first time for everything, I guess. Were you able to rebook your flight from Calgary?”

“No.” Gabe stretches her neck side-to-side.

“You found a polka band in a U-Haul van?”

Sheena snorts.

Gabe glares. “Hilarious. More like a stuffy bus alongside walking, talking, overactive sweat glands with swamp ass and fourshared brain cells.” She shakes her head at our inability to catch on. “We hitched a ride with the Bears back to Vancouver and drove across the border to Seattle.”

Bea pops the jet-black visor on the motorcycle helmet open and whines, completely ignoring my brilliant comedic delivery and Gabe's disgust. “Lucky. I want a big hockey boy to crush me like a weighted blanket.”

Gabe rolls her eyes. “I wasworking.”

“Same.” Sheena adjusts the curl of her lash line, then turns to face us once more. “Twenty inches of snow doesn't stop babies from getting sick.”

“Damn,” I chime in. “It's like you never left Canada. They're having you come in?”

“Perks of being essential medical staff. The hospital doesn't have enough nurses as it is.”

Snap. Snap.Bea's visor clacks as she flaps it open and closed. She stops when we fall silent, realizing what she's been doing, and lets out a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

“What is that thing?”

“It's a motorcycle helmet.”

“And why do you have one?”

She tips it up onto the top of her head. “My brother gifted it to me. Apparently, I'm too clumsy to be biking around in winter unprotected. No trust in me, these people.”

The rest of us intone in a somewhat-agreeing chorus. “Itiskinda dangerous.”

“Yeah, the roads get so icy and slippery—”

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