Page 67 of Night Shift

“That was a shit trade in retrospect, but they couldn’t have known—” Vincent begins, then narrows his eyes. “I thought you didn’t know anything about basketball.”

I shuffle the flowers and book and note around in my arms, suddenly shy.

“Well, I didn’t. But then I met you, and I stopped scrolling past the articles and the videos on social media and started paying attention. Also, I read the Coach K autobiography you checked out from the library. It’s actually kind of a fun sport to watch. I’m sorry I talked shit, okay? I care about it now. Because I care about you. I want to know your opinions and the teams you like and which players you’d want to be stranded on an island with.”

Vincent arches an eyebrow. “You’re genuinely interested?”

“Of course I am. It’s part of you. And I’m interested in all of you, not just how good you are at reading me poetry and”—I stop short and blush—“other stuff.”

Vincent blinks at me with those absurdly thick eyelashes of his, and then a slow smile breaks across his face.

“I’m good at other stuff, am I?”

There he is.

My Vincent.

I feel my whole body unwind and sag with relief. I want to reach out and touch him, somehow, but my arms are still full between the sunflowers and the romance novel and the note. All I can do is smile at him, even as my eyes start to sting and the built-up anxiety of the last week drains out of my body and leaves me feeling utterly exhausted.

“I’m sorry I ruined your birthday,” I whisper.

Vincent runs his tongue over his teeth and shakes his head.

“You ruined my whole fucking week, Holiday.”

Again, he tries to make it a joke.

Again, he’s an open book.

“Vincent,” I say miserably.

He takes the sunflowers and the novel from my arms and turns to set them, very gently, on a display shelf of erotic romance proudly labeled spicy booktok reads. And then he turns back to me, loops an arm over my shoulders, and pulls me into his chest. The warmth of his body seeps right through my rain-damp clothes. I press my nose into the collar of his sweater and will myself not to make any audible crying noises as I clutch fistfuls of his jacket. But his stupidly large hand is flat against my back, bridging my shoulder blades, so I know he feels it when my breath catches as I inhale.

“I think that’s enough groveling,” he says above me.

“Are you sure? I can go bigger, I think.”

The words are muffled by his chest, but he must hear me, because he sighs and squeezes me just a little bit tighter. I try to breathe steadily and focus on the steady thump of his heartbeat against my cheek so I won’t lose it.

“Maybe another day,” he says. And then he mumbles into my hair, so quietly I almost miss it, “Nobody’s ever given me flowers before.”

I push back so I can look him in the eyes.

“I can get you more,” I tell him, forgetting to be embarrassed when a tear spills out and dribbles down my cheek. “Seriously, I’ll give you fucking fields of them. Whatever it takes to let you know how into you I actually am. I just—I think, for now, I need you to give me aggressively straightforward statements of intent. Constantly. Otherwise, I’ll run circles in my head trying to interpret things.”

I step back fully, so I can discreetly run a fingertip under my eyes.

Vincent watches me with an odd expression on his face.

“Shit,” he finally says, scrubbing his hand over his face. “Guess I’m a coward too. All right. Um.” He rolls his shoulders back in a move I recognize: he’s hyping himself up the way he does before a basketball game. “I’ve never dated anyone before. I mean, I’ve gone on dates, but I’ve never actually been in a situation where I wanted to keep seeing a girl after we hooked up once or twice. And that’s not me being a dick—it’s always been mutual. I genuinely thought I just preferred keeping everything casual. And then I met you, and you—” He breaks off.

“I what?” I press.

“You . . . intimidate me.”

A burst of shocked laughter breaks through my tears. “Oh, fuck off.”

Vincent lifts an arm to rake his fingers through his hair. There’s a little tremble in his hand that tells me he’s serious.

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