Page 65 of Night Shift

One more step, and Vincent swallows hard.

Almost like me being this close makes him nervous.

Almost like he’s finally catching on.

“Is there a reason you’re giving me my own résumé?” he asks, voice a little bit hoarse.

He’s close enough now that I could reach out and touch him. And fuck, do I want to touch him. But grabbing Vincent by the shirt and kissing him won’t solve our problems right now. So, I just clutch the flowers tight and refuse to break our eye contact, hoping that my words mean as much to him as they do to me.

“I like you,” I admit, my face so hot it almost hurts. “A lot. I like that we can talk about anything, and I like that we have the same sense of humor, and I like that you understand me when I snap at you, and I—I like that you call me out when I’m being stupid.”

Vincent snorts. I take it like a champ.

“Even though I hate feeling stupid,” I press on. “It’s probably my biggest fear. Maybe it’s the dyslexia thing, or the introvert thing—I don’t know. I guess I have a massive ego. We can psychoanalyze me later.” I can’t look into his eyes for this part, so I stare fixedly into the spiraling seeds of one of the sunflowers. “But at your birthday party, I—I just felt like if I ignored all the red flags, I’d be stupid for walking right into trouble despite all the warning signs. So, I tried listening to my gut, and now I feel stupid for overreacting and not giving you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know how to win here. I don’t think I can. But I don’t think I care anymore, because I’d rather be stupid than hurt you again. Because I really fucking like you.”

Twenty-six

Vincent doesn’t say anything right away, so my words settle heavily in the silence.

I’ve never told anyone I like them before.

It’s terrifying.

It genuinely feels like I’ve handed him my heart—the literal internal organ imperative to my survival—and given him the choice to either accept it or drop-kick it across the bookstore. I can’t look him in the eyes. If I do, I’m going to burst into tears. And I’m trying to hold it together and give him the time he needs to digest what I’ve just dumped on him, but fuck, I wish I had a free hand so I could fidget with my hair or pick at my nails or do something other than stand in front of him and hold my breath, waiting for him to slam-dunk me and my miserable, sloppy, unrehearsed excuse for a grand gesture in the nearest trash can.

Instead, he says, very gently, “You’re not stupid, Kendall.”

I scoff.

“Okay, you’re a little stupid,” he amends with the faintest twitch of his lips. “But I could’ve handled everything better. You told me you weren’t comfortable having all my friends involved and feeling like you had an audience, and I still asked you out in front of all of them. I crossed one of your boundaries, and I’m sorry for that. For disrespecting you.”

It takes me a solid six seconds to register that he’s apologizing too.

He’s offering an olive branch. He’s leading us to the middle ground. He wants to rebuild what we broke too. It feels like the sun breaking through the clouds after a long week of bleak, ice-cold darkness, and I want nothing more than to tip my head back and bask in the warmth his words bring—the relief—but then I realize that he’s doing it again.

He’s giving me exactly what he thinks I want.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Stop. Please. You have to stop being so—so nice to me.”

Vincent lets out a startled laugh. “What are you talking about?”

“I ruined your birthday! I essentially accused you of hooking up with me as part of some shitty misogynistic pact with your friends. I messed up, so I’m the one who’s supposed to make a grand gesture and grovel and humiliate myself publicly or whatever. So, will you stop being so fucking selfless for, like, five minutes and let yourself be pissed off? Why is that so hard, to think about yourself first? Huh? You tell me I can practice on you, and you memorize poems for me, and you eat me out on your own fucking birthday, and I have no real clue what you want because it’s always about me. What’s up with that?”

I prod his chest with the bouquet of sunflowers for emphasis.

At last, I see the first real spark of anger in Vincent.

“You don’t know what I want?” he demands, low and rough. “Seriously?”

When he looks me up and down in one slow stroke, it’s not just indignation and frustration burning in his eyes. It’s blatant, unapologetic hunger. It’s the mirror image of my own desire, and beneath that, a tiny pinch of something bittersweet—something suspiciously like longing—that tells me this week has been just as painful for him as it’s been for me.

It knocks the breath out of my lungs.

I clutch his note tighter in my hand and remember his haiku.

“Well, I do now,” I say miserably.

Vincent isn’t done. He takes a step toward me, so we’re toe to toe and he’s towering over me with every inch of his (absurd, unnecessary, honestly excessive) height.

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