Page 84 of Take Me Home

“Wow.” She laughed. “Subtle.”

“Not for that. I mean, notnotfor that. I just want to…” He rubbed his face, chuckling into his palms. Why was he embarrassed, especially after what they’d already done in the barn? “I want to hold you. In my bed.”

She chewed slowly, feigning deep thought, dragging it out.

“Haze,” he groaned. A bubbling affection for her washed over him.

“You told me you didn’t want to spoon me.”

“When did I—”

She clasped her hands on the table between them, utterly serious. “In the Lovebird Suite. You said—”

Ash pushed back from the table and hoisted her out of her chair and over his shoulder. “I lied,” he said, loving the loud laugh that burst from her.

She swatted ineffectually at his back, exclaiming in mock horror, “Oh my God, youlied? You weredyingto spoon me?”

He set her down at the door to the stairs and smoothed her wild hair back from her bright, smiling, perfect face. He shook his head at her, pressed a firm kiss to her forehead. “You have no idea.”

“Well, we’d better—”

The front door opened.

“Greet your family,” she finished, amused at how he deflated against her.

“They can’t see us. We could hurry up there. They’ll never know we’re here.”

“Except for my car and all the dishes we left out.” She kissed his cheek then laid a loud, hard slap on his butt. “Buck up, private.”

Chapter

Nineteen

It was late when Hazel returned to her father’s house. She’d stayed at Ash’s through board games, dinner, and a movie. When they’d finally ventured up to his room, he’d held her just like he said he wanted to, his body fitted to the back of hers, arms tight around her. If he’d rolled his hips, if his lazy finger strokes on her arm had ventured anywhere else, if his affectionate nuzzling on her neck ever turned to kissing, Hazel would have reignited like dry kindling. But she followed his lead, and after a while, an odd combination of sensations enveloped her, like falling and being caught, a sinking rock settling into a soft seabed. She’d snapped a photo of them on her phone, wanting to hold on to the feeling. “Proof of life?” he’d murmured, and although she didn’t intend to send it to Sylvia, that phrase had been exactly, perfectly right.

She was still thinking about Ash’s soft flannel comforter that smelled like him and his low, sleepy-rough voice in her ear, talking about small things—parts of campus they both liked, local events they’d attended, movies they’d seen, though none of them together—when she let herself through her father’s front door.

The alarm chirped. It hadn’t been set, and she wondered whether she should tell someone she was back or try to set itherself. Then, the panel beeped, and a flashing alert told her the alarm was reactivated—a keypad in the master bedroom, probably. In which case, her father or Val was aware she was sneaking back in at nearly one in the morning.

Did Lucy or Raf ever come home after curfew and tiptoe up the stairs to their room, mindful of every creaky place on every step? Hazel mused. Was it Val or Hazel’s father, or both, who waited up to lecture them? A door opened. She lurched out of sight, only to catch her toe on a potted plant and fall hard to her knees on the tile floor.

“Hazel?” her father asked from his bedroom door across the living room.

She could crawl to her room. In the dark, she’d just be a weird shadow, and then she’d be gone. But if he saw hercrawlingaway, that would be far more awkward than saying a quick hello and slinking off to bed.

“Yeah, it’s me. Sorry.”

As she struggled to right the plant she’d taken down, the foyer light flicked on. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t know if he meant right at that moment, hoisting the heavy pot back onto its flat bottom, or if he wanted to know what she’dbeendoing. Or was it a broader question, some fundamental confusion about her as a person? She wasn’t sure how to answer, which he apparently took to mean something was wrong because he eased the weight of the pot out of her hands and held her by the shoulders to get a good, concerned look at her.

Oh God, did he think she was drunk? She’d never once had this experience as a teenager, but now, as an adult, she was going to have to convince her father she hadn’t broken any rules he’d never set.

“I’m out late a lot at school,” she said defensively. “College towns don’t really sleep.” Suddenly, it felt imperative not to apologize. No one had asked her to be back by a certain time.

Hazel’s father nodded at the throbbing knee she was absently massaging. “Do we need to amputate?” Maybe every dad told this one, even the ones who stepped back from the job of parenting, but she had clear memories of him saying it while she fought tears on a playground, a soccer field, beneath the big tree in their old backyard. It always broke through the pain, made her huff a little laugh.

“I think I’ll live.”

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