Page 5

5

GOODBYE, RIVERSIDE. HELLO, CABO!

FULTON

S hiloh’s touching me, and it’s not an awkward I’m-just-trying-to-reach-across-you touch either. I can’t believe this is really happening. Three weeks. I get to spend three beautiful, uninterrupted weeks with the girl who’s plagued my every waking moment. I feel like the luckiest man alive right now.

Her touch is… unparalleled . Her dainty, slim fingers fit into the slats of my hockey-worn ones with ease. It’s a comforting caress, as delicate as the silk intricacies of a spiderweb, yet somehow strung together with a muted kind of strength.

Okay, I lied. At first, there was definitely some she-Hulk strength going on when she was crushing every bone in my hand with her immobilizing death grip, but regardless, I never wanted her to let go.

When she started to doze off, I stole a few sideways glances here and there, wanting to make sure that her chair wasn’t too uncomfortable. I know it’s creepy to watch a girl sleep, okay? But—God, it feels stupid to say—I feel an overwhelming sense of peace when I look at her. She’s a light snorer, barely audible to those who aren’t listening, and she curls in on her body like a cat conserving heat. There’s also a charming puddle of drool on the collar of her sweatshirt.

The girl across the aisle hasn’t spoken to either of us since the plane took off, and I’m grateful for the silence honestly. Earbuds equipped, “Curb Your Anxiety” playlist at the ready, I’m about to start the first song when a tunnel of turbulence swallows the airplane, shaking everyone’s seats and awakening who I can only imagine is a very distressed baby Eda a few rows down from us. With a jerky lurch, Shiloh jackknifes into a high-alert position, and she clings to my arm like she’s just been magnetized to my side.

“You’re okay,” I whisper, and as ironic as it is, being able to serve as someone else’s life-sized anxiety repellant assuages my own rowdy bunch of nerves.

Her tiny body trembles with each amplified clank of the airplane. “Are we crashing to the ground?” she whispers, eyes sewn shut.

I quell a laugh, and I readjust my squished arm so I can protectively wrap her in a side embrace. “Nope. Think we’re just going through a rough patch.”

“I’m, um, not the biggest fan of flying.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell.”

Although apprehension stains her words, a half-smile rewards my efforts, and it’s a welcome sight after a tiresome thirty minutes without witnessing it. Her lips are naturally plump and moisturized, and the blush-dusted apples of her cheeks puff out from the motion, bringing my attention to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dimple winking at me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your personal space,” she rambles, gearing up to break contact.

I don’t let her withdraw her hand. I need her touch more than I need my next breath of air. Not only is Shiloh the embodiment of a glowing beacon, but she’s a luminescent lure dangling in the ocean’s midnight zone, enticing me, leading me on a safe path home after I narrowly miss the snapping of carnivorous teeth.

Reassurance scrapes up my throat. “You’re not invading anything.”

Some of the tension in her shoulders melts, the clench of her hand following suit. She opens her mouth to say something, but the words seem to face some sort of delay, and I wish I could rewire every single one of her worries.

She never has to apologize for touching me. Ever.

“I don’t like being out of control,” she ekes out, and her palpable discomfort feathers from where she’s touching me.

“You should’ve told me you were afraid of flying,” I say quietly.

I can’t believe I practically kidnapped this girl and stuck her on a plane with me for two hours. She literally has nowhere to run. Why didn’t I think to ask if flying would pose a problem? Not everyone travels. Not everyone likes heights. This mini vacation is already off to a rough start, and that’s overlooking this airplane’s invisible, one-sided fight with gravity.

“You already paid for my ticket. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. And it’s”—Shiloh drives her nails into my arm, her whole body wilting like flaxen parchment curling amidst a ring of roaring, orange-blue flames—“it’s not that bad.”

I’d usually be jumping for joy at the prospect of a girl entertaining any sort of physical contact with me, but not when she’s under the impression that she’ll die if she lets go of my arm.

Maybe it’s the altitude sickness talking, but I impulsively thumb away a loose strand of her hair, pushing it out of the frisbee-sized eyes that regard me with an unearthed innocence I’ve never seen before. “You know, I would’ve driven us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That would’ve taken twenty hours.”

“I would drive any amount of distance, any length of time, if it meant that you were comfortable,” I insist, my heart drumming an unruly tune against my rib cage, almost loud enough to be heard over the whoosh of air skittering over the plane’s wings.

Shiloh’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “You’d do that? For a girl you just met?”

“No, Shiloh. I’d do that for you .”

Her perfect lips round into an O shape, and that concerningly green pallor of hers thaws into the usual warmth of her olive skin, so flawless that God himself must have dry brushed her with the finest of earth’s clays.

Good job, Fulton. That was…flirty. But not too suggestive.

I barely register the pilot’s distorted voice crackling through the speaker before the plane gives one last shudder, the crowd gives one last collective gasp of fear, and then we return to our regularly scheduled programming. Shiloh’s grip has loosened exponentially, and when she realizes that she doesn’t need to jerk my arm out of its socket, she crawls back into her shell and extricates herself.

She digs around in her backpack for God knows what, and then she brandishes a pink, spiral-bound notebook with a meek but proud smile. “I made this itinerary for us. You didn’t really give me one, so I looked up some fun things for us to do. It’ll help us stick to a schedule when Hurricane Wedding hits in full force.”

I didn’t know an itinerary could be so sexy.

Soundlessly, she hands me her schedule, and I flip open to a page overrun with glitter ink, doodles, sticky notes, and sectioned-off bullet points corresponding to different days of the week. It’s freakishly organized, and probably the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever seen.

Her fingernails pry apart the emaciated threads on her sleeve as she peers at her work. “There’s this really cool turtle release project going on at the beach near our hotel. We can watch olive ridley and black turtles hatch and journey toward the sea. I’ve never seen a turtle in real life before, but they’re so adorable. Did you know that olive ridley turtles aren’t naturally migratory like other sea turtles? They actually prefer to remain within eight hundred and fifty kilometers of wherever they decide to nest. Which can be good or bad, I guess. Good in the sense that conservation measures reap a larger benefit for the survival of their species, but bad in the sense that their varied habitats raise their exposure to accidental capture by humans.”

I’ll admit it—I lost her somewhere around the second “turtle,” but fuck, watching her talk about something she’s so passionate about makes me fall for her even harder. And I’m already one perilous, pigeon-footed trip away from face-planting.

Admiration toils inside me, nearly turning my solar plexus on its head, and I blink at her like some lovesick puppy dog. I don’t know anything about turtles, so I don’t have anything to contribute to the conversation. I’m honestly afraid that I’ll embarrass myself if I say anything when I’m in such an incapacitated state. She’s a drug I can’t quit—a saccharine delicacy lodged in the molars of my teeth.

Icy realization fastens to her features, and she quickly closes her journal like she’s harboring some dark, deadly secret instead of a to-do list full of Cabo’s cutest wildlife. “But we don’t have to look at turtles. We can do whatever you want. This was just a suggestion.”

Something bitter crosses my tongue, and the dejection on her face twists a blade through my gut. I wish she didn’t feel the need to make herself small around me. I catalog the heavy weight of her brow, the strained cords of her neck, the bottom lip that’s been mottled with teeth concavities and a small smear of dried blood.

“What if I want to go look at turtles with you?” I ask.

“You’re not just saying that to be polite?”

“Shiloh, I’d do anything you asked if it meant I got to spend time with you. ”

She chuckles, and it’s like sunlight sawing through a conglomeration of storm clouds. “Don’t say stuff like that. I’ll make you keep me company while I cook.”

She’s a cook too? What can’t this girl do?

“I don’t know any other way I’d want to spend my night,” I tell her, my lips ticking up into a wholehearted grin, all the first-time fear evaporating like a since-hidden message hastily drawn in foggy condensation.

Something shifts in Shiloh, reining back that spark of life that had guttered with the unfamiliarity of the flight. “Fulton Cazzarelli, are you flirting with me?” she teases coyly, doing a little shimmy with her shoulders.

“Um, that depends. Is it working?”

Suddenly, the small vents overhead aren’t strong enough to tame the merciless fever raging through my body, and my heart’s dropping to my stomach while my stomach’s propelling up my goddamn throat. Here I am, sitting with a girl who’s pretty enough to be a runway model, and I’m totally blowing it by being myself. Whoever said you just need to be yourself to impress a girl was lying. They’ve clearly never been a twenty-four-year-old virgin with a loser complex and an extensive history of public humiliation.

Her naturally long lashes flutter delicately against her brow bone, and a timid smile teases her pouty lips—lips that I’ve dreamt of kissing at least a handful of times. During an early morning when the wrens trill and there’s still frost crystallizing on the window; during a late night where dusk bruises the sky in shades of violet; during any time in between where I can get my hands on her.

Blood wells to the thin skin of her cheeks, and whether it’s from embarrassment or flattery, I have no idea. “Would it be totally inappropriate if I said yes?”

Wait… what ? Have I died and gone to heaven ?

“You’re kidding, right?” I blubber, shock and hope dueling in the depths of my stomach.

She shakes her head. “You’re an amazing person, Fulton. Even if you can’t see it yourself. Not only have you been a generous host, but you’ve pretty much been my emotional support person for this entire plane ride.”

Nobody has ever said anything like that to me before. Nobody has ever relied on me for anything—I mean, except my teammates. I feel this carnal need to protect Shiloh, to prioritize her, to do everything in my power to make her happy. This is the first girl in forever who’s seen past my hockey alter ego. It’s like she has a peephole into my very soul. Her consideration doesn’t come with conditions, nor does it come with an expiration date. And that speaks volumes about who she is as a person.

Riding some kind of faux-confidence high, my fingers crawl to her hand, and I lightly brush my thumb over the backs of her knuckles. Holding her hand like this…I can’t tell you how long this fantasy has festered in my brain.

“I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Shiloh.”

Her hand squeezes mine—a nonverbal cue that tilts my world on its axis and pumps out a complimentary flood of endorphins.

“So it’s a date then,” she decides.

“A date,” I parrot dumbly.

“Is that too strong of a word?”

Heat glues our palms together, and the potentially disastrous consequence of a date shatters my previous visage of composure.

Date? DATE? I thought we were going for a casual hangout. But a date…oh, God. A date is way more serious and way out of my wheelhouse. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a date. Years. Four, to be exact.

Shiloh just stares at me expectantly, so oblivious to my snowballing panic that it’s almost comical. She doesn’t even acknowledge that my hand is abnormally sweaty—no, she continues to hold it, endearment glimmering in her rich, chocolate eyes.

Nervousness flickers at the base of my spine, but even amidst my very reasonable concerns, my heart grabs the proverbial steering wheel and plays with the delicate balance of life by taking a quick U-turn off a sky-scraping mountain.

“No! A date sounds great. I’d love to go on a date with you.”