Page 36 of Stealing Sunshine

“Alright, you win. But I need to sort my hair, at least. I’ll be quick.”

She doesn’t smile, but I don’t expect her to. “Three minutes.”

I salute her and disappear into the bathroom instead of my bedroom. The floor doesn’t creak for a few moments after I’ve closed the door, but when it does, I swear I hear her muttering to herself.

If only Icould hear the words.

“Do you have a favourite colour?”I ask five minutes later.

With fall rolling in, the leaves are orange and crunch beneath my Converse, where they’ve fallen on the sidewalk. I pinch my cardigan together at my chest to fight the chill and wait for Bryce to speak for the first time since we left the house.

She didn’t put a sweater or coat on before we left, and it doesn’t look like the cool morning affects her. Maybe she has goosebumps beneath the sleeves of her blouse or on her tattooed thighs. Or maybe she truly is the ice queen and doesn’t feel the shift in temperature.

“Yellow,” she answers.

“Really?”

“Black would be too obvious.”

I twist my lips to hide a smile. “I’ll admit that I thought it would be black.”

“It’s been yellow for a while now.”

“I’ll make a note of that. Can I ask another question?”

She stares ahead at the row of shops on our right. The Beautifully Bold swinging sign is behind the Thistle and Thorn one, two thriving businesses run by two badass women whom I’ve come to know. I get hit with a blast of pride when we pass both shops, and Bryce straightens, as if feeling the same thing.

“You don’t have to ask whether you can ask questions. Just do it,” she mutters.

“I don’t want to be rude.”

“You’re not,” she states simply.

“Good to know.” I walk around a missing chunk of concrete on the sidewalk and fall back to her side, making sure to keep some space between us. She watches me, eyes heavy and focused on my movements. “When did you get your first tattoo?”

“My fifteenth birthday.”

My lips part in surprise. “Fifteen? How did you get away with that?”

“Wade Steele forges a great signature.”

There’s no stopping my laugh. It punches out of my lungs, leaving me breathless. Wade Steele, the owner of Steele Ranch, is the world’s biggest hard-ass, but somehow, his kindness knows no bounds.

His wife, Eliza, wouldn’t have put up with him for the duration of their marriage if he wasn’t soft and squishy beneath his hard shell.

“Where is the tattoo?” I ask, the words airy as I catch my breath.

She licks her lower lip, tugging at her shirt collar again. “Nowhere I can show you in public.”

My cheeks start to burn at her bluntness, but I blame it on the chilled breeze that’s begun to pick up. “Can you at least tell me what it is?”

“A middle finger shaded in pink, purple, and blue.”

The bisexual flag colours. “You knew when you were fifteen that you were bisexual?”

“Fourteen, actually, but nobody would tattoo me then. I found a spot in Calgary that would ink me at fifteen, but it was a grungy fucking shop with a creep of an owner who just wanted to get his hands on a teenager. It’s a miracle I didn’t get an infection afterward,” she says with a huff.

I shiver at the thought of an infected tattoo and what sort of man she’s talking about. “I think I knew at fourteen that I was a lesbian, but I wasn’t ready to announce it until I was sixteen.”

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