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Eli grins and turns the wheel with the flat of his left hand as he rounds the corner onto the red bridge.

Great. Now it’s all that plus a softer, more liquid fluttering down low. Why is his competent driving so hot?

I turn away from him, looking out through the window and squeezing my thighs shut as if I can physically stop the sensation. Eli’s grin has always undone me—even when I harbored so much anger toward him.

So much pain.

It’s why I hated it so much.

“I’ll have you back to the kitchen in half an hour. Tops. Unless you want to stay out.”

“I should never have gone!” My voice is a little strangled. I’m mad at myself for leaving ahead of the lunch rush. But I wasn’t acting rationally back then. I couldn’t think with Eli so close to me; the scent of his soap and skin flipping every cell in my body toon.

His fingers drumming a beat on the console between us has me turning back to him. It’s almost like he’s nervous.

I truly have no idea where he’s taking me.

The hyped-up butterflies pick up their pace. “Is it a new restaurant I somehow don’t know about?”

“Nope. In fact, it’s the furthest thing from restaurant work I could imagine.”

Nevertheless, a moment later he’s pulling up on Riverfront Way, parking right in front of Ben’s restaurant.

I frown, confused.

But Eli’s hopping out of the truck, and I’ve only just gotten my seat belt off when my door swings open and he’s got a hand out to help me down. A frigid breeze picks up on the sidewalk, sending a swirl of crisp orange leaves swirling behind Eli. His hair whips in the cold.

I’m tempted not to take his hand. It’s like I still need to hang onto that tiny piece of the Reese from two weeks ago—the one that was still so fucking mad at Eli Dunham.

But I can barely hear that Reese anymore.

It’s only temporary. And there’s no harm in losing my hand into his big warm palm, feeling the comfort of his fingers curling around mine.

Eli looks a bit like a kid at Christmas as he leads me across the sidewalk, wind nipping at our cheeks. We’re not going to the restaurant, I realize, but to his building next door. A moment later, he’s punching numbers into a keypad, then holding the door for me when it clicks open. I pass him too closely, his clean laundry scent filling my nostrils.

I’m suddenly knocked back into a moment, two years ago. We were lying in bed together, Eli’s freshly laundered sheets wrapped around our naked bodies, that same scent filling the space around us, along with another muskier scent that makes my stomach flip even now.

Was I lying down, still breathing hard from making love when he spoke, my hands twisting circles in the dusting of his chest hair? Or was it afterward, that he told me that story?

Afterward, I recall, as we enter the darkened lobby. I was wrapped in that soft sheet while he painted my toes—yes, Eli Dunham had once painted my toes—badly—when he told the story about building his mom a Popsicle-stick model of the hotel.

“It took me weeks,” he’d said, aiming the brush at my tiny pinkie toe. “Months maybe, I can’t remember. Dad had to help me cut all the windows. I insisted they match exactly. I even painted the ghost of Eleanor Cleary in the east wing with Cassandra’s pale peach nail polish.”

I’d laughed, but my chest was tight, thinking of that little boy. I think that was the moment I fell for Eli. I mean, I know that can’t be right; it can’t have been his face, slightly embarrassed at having confessed this elaborate present he handmade for his mom to the woman he was casually seeing.

Casual.

I let go of Eli’s hand as we make our way up the dark stairwell, ostensibly to grip the railing, but more so I don’t fall down into a sinkhole of old feelings. Because that’s the only way I’ve managed to keep my head through all of this.

He doesn’t say anything as we walk up the stairs, past the artist studios on the first and second floors, their doors painted vibrant colors. But I can feel him behind me. I can sense his energy, and I’m all kinds of messed up about it. Because part of me feels the man from before, the one I’ve been mad at for so long. The other part of me sees the man he’s been now: his thoughtfulness and caretaking of my feelings, his gratitude and shock that I’d be kind to him. And that pulsing, intense, gorgeous man under it all, the one I’ve never stopped wanting.

The one who made his mom a Popsicle motel.

When we reach the third floor, he leads me into the hallway, and stops in front of an unmarked door.

“Ready?” he asks.

I balk, my heart pounding, and not just from the stairs. “I don’t know!”