Page 20 of Fierce Love
I shake my head and stifle my smile. “February first.”
“Missed it by a mile this year. I won’t make that mistake again. Can I buy you a birthday drink now?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Me either,” he says, slipping his ID back into his wallet. “Just quit today. I’ll have a Coke. Probably shouldn’t be drinking when I’ll be driving you around the island after your shift anyway.”
I let out a laugh. “Driving me where?”
“Wherever you want to go, as long as you’re in the passenger seat beside me.”
Our gazes meet again, and he holds mine, his sincerity clear, so I try to make mine clear too. “Look, if you’re hoping to hook up with some starry-eyed poor girl for fun, you’ve come to the wrong bar. Or at least the wrong waitress. I don’t do random hookups with bored, rich guys.”
His lips tip up in an almost smile, and he sits back in his chair, arms crossed. “If I was a bored rich guy, Imightbe offended.” He sets his phone face down on the table. “Your claim isn’t very convincing anyway.” There’s a teasing glint in his blue-green eyes. “I mean, you were the one who asked me to beyour boyfriend the other night. Asked me to kiss you. And you certainly looked a little starry-eyedafterour kiss, so…” He raises his eyebrows and gives a little shrug like I’m the problem, not him.
There’s no easy comeback or brutal honesty I can drop on him, because he’s right. All of it happened exactly as he says, and there’s a part of me that really wants to give into whatever he’s proposing. Heat rushes to my cheeks again, and I’m sure I’m bright red with embarrassment.
“I didn’t come here looking for a poor girl or a random hookup. I came here looking for you. Just you. Rich or poor. Hookup or friendzoned; I don’t care. Whatever I felt the other night, whateverthisis right now—I want more of it. As much as I can get for as long as you’ll let me have it.”
A web of cracks streaks across my hard heart at his earnest delivery. His private school education has certainly given him the gift of persuasion. “You’re a Tucker,” I say, the words falling out of my mouth before I can stop myself. “I’m a Davis. A Thompson. Do you understand what that means? What I’m coming from?”
“You’re Hollyn,” he says. “And I’m Nate. And I don’t care who’s a Tucker or a Davis or a Thompson. None of that matters to me.”
But it’ll matter to other people, and he won’t be the one facing their wrath, looking over his shoulder. Agreeing to go anywhere with him is a field of potential landmines, given my family.
“I don’t know,” I hedge.
“Give me one night. Tonight. If I can’t convince you that this is worth whatever comes our way, then I’ll figure out how to let it go. I promise.” He extends his pinky finger toward me, and he holds eye contact as I hook my finger around his.
“One night,” I say.
The stars dot the sky, an incalculable number, impossibly bright. Nate eases one hand under his head while his other points out another constellation. Then he takes my finger and traces the stars across the sky. Beneath us, the floor of the boat is cool, even through the blankets. When we arrived at the campground, Callahan met us with the keys to a boat. We’d gone down the narrow cliff face path to a sheltered dock, and from there, Nate had taken us off the island on the biggest boat I’ve ever been on to the middle of nowhere. There isn’t any artificial light for miles.
The ocean rocks us, lulling me into a false sense of peace.
“Constellations are rich-people education,” I say, and Nate’s laugh beside me is gentle. Everything about the night has been dusted with magic.
“Everyone can see the stars.”
“Not everyone has time to see the stars and research constellations and memorize them.”
“It’s a personal interest. Not everything about me is because my family has money,” he says.
“Maybe that’s true. I can’t believe acampgroundis your favorite place in theworld.”
“You’re never going to get over that.”
“Never. After all the places you’ve told me you’ve been,thatis where you’d most like to be?”
“Right now,thisis where I’d most like to be.” He glances at me, the moon casting a glow across his features. Painfully handsome. “I love it there,” he says. “Splitting wood with Cal is the highlight of my week. They need a lot of it for the summer campers, and I find the work strangely satisfying.”
“Hence the calluses on your hands.”
“Hard work comes at a cost,” he says, and the same teasing tone is in his voice.
“You could just buy your own campground.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Might just be Cal’s parents’ place that makes me feel this way and not any ol’ campground, you know? Can’t buy anything until I’m eighteen anyway. After that, I’m out from under Celia Tucker’s iron fist.”
