Page 49 of Riot Rules

“Like a drowned rat?”

His left eyebrow curves up. “I was going to say adorable, but now that you mention it…”

I slap him, then go back to wrestling furiously with the zipper. Again, his hands land on mine, stopping me. “Jeez. You take a girl’s virginity and suddenly it’s okay for her to assault you.” In one deft, smooth move, he lowers the zip. It would be polite to thank him for the assistance, but he’s enjoying this far too much. I shrug out of the jacket, and it lands on the floor of the observatory with a wet slap. Cringing, I remove my sodden shoes and pull my dripping socks off, and then I face him again. He’s watching me with a steady, serious intensity that makes my cheeks flame.

“Your hair’s crazy,” he offers.

“Thanks.” Ahh, sarcasm, my trusty old friend. I grab the hair tie from my wrist, ready to go to war with my curls, but Dash stops me.

“Don’t. I like it. It’s sexy.”

Sexy? I’ve always hated my hair. I’ve straightened it and braided it and done everything in my power to make it ‘normal.’ I’ve never considered that anyone might consider itsexy. It’s wet, which means that the curls are corkscrewing everywhere. Dash winds one of the twists around his finger, humming, his voice as low as a resonant bassline. “Could have picked somewhere easier to meet, y’know,” he murmurs. “Given the fact that the sky’s falling out there.”

He’s closer. The back of his other hand brushes against mine, and my breath catches in my throat. I can smell him—the wild mint, and fresh winter scent of him combined with the smell of rain. His eyes are a kaleidoscope of color—pale blue darkening to green, his irises circled with a thick rim of amber.

“I thought about it. But…”

He cocks his head to one side. “But?”

“I didn’t have your cell number. And I didn’t think driving down to the house would have been a good idea…”

“Definitely not,” he agrees.

“So…”

He holds out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

God. How did I forget in such a short space of time? He’s extraordinary. He’s an exploding sun. He’s a live wire, humming with electricity. A shot of epinephrine straight to the heart. And I justforgot?

No…it isn’t that. I’ve been so focused on making it to this point, positive that he wasn’t going to show up, that I didn’t really consider what it would be like if hedidshow up. And now here he is, inches away from me, and my heart can’t handle the reality of it.

I don’t recall giving him my phone. I must have handed it over, though, because there it is in his hands and he’s tapping away at the screen. He gives it back to me and a new contact sits there on the screen:LDL IV.

I fire a sardonic sideways glance his way. “Was the fourth really necessary?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “Wouldn’t want you getting confused with all the other LDLs.”

“Because there aresomany of them.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. He walks away, across the observatory floor, toward the telescope. It’s a leviathan—one of the largest privately-owned telescopes in the country. There are only two bigger than her in the States, but neither of them are quite as accurate as our Mabel. Dashiell stops in front of it with his hands in his pockets, his head bowed as he reads the inscription on the side of the brass guard that houses the mirrors.

“I’ve only been here once,” he muses. “Seems like an awful lot of effort to get up here when it’s too cloudy to even use the thing most of the time.”

He has a point. “There are always breaks in the clouds, though.” I run my hand over the barrel of the scope, greeting it lovingly like an old friend. “You just have to wait.”

“All night,” he adds.

“Sometimes. But when it clears,ifit clears, it’s so worth it.”

He clenches his jaw. He isn’t looking at me, but I get the strangest feeling that he wants to. “Why do you love them so much?”

“The stars?”

He nods.

“Why do you love playing the piano so much?”

His stoic study of the telescope ends abruptly. His eyes are sharp on me, scanning my features. “And who told you aboutthat, I wonder?”