A pile of checkers and poker chips were stacked on the table, and Dan watched Harper’s hands as she fiddled with the pieces, running her nail over their edges and turning them between each finger. He wanted to map the strong tendons and blue veins that stood out against her skin, trace her angular knuckles, and entwine her long, nimble fingers with his own.
Her hands were always moving, taking every opportunity to flex and stretch. It was like she discovered the world around her by using her hands, every touch allowing her to find the nuances of her environment, flitting along with a delicate grace as she explored hidden patterns she seemed to sense before she saw.
He loved watching her hands.
She wrapped them around her coffee cup and brought it to her lips.
“What are you staring at?” she asked over the rim.
Dan’s attention snapped to Harper’s face.
“Your hands,” he admitted with a sheepish grin.
Her eyebrows lifted behind her bangs. “My hands?”
“I like watching them explore. They’re fascinating.”
She gave him an incredulous frown that made him laugh.
“They are! Your hands are beautiful. I mean … all of you is beautiful,” Dan’s heart beat up into his throat as the words spilled out. “But I’m admiring your hands in particular tonight.” He ducked his head, worried that he’d said too much.
But holding back that simple truth would be like denying the sky was blue or grass was green. She was beautiful and she should know it.
Harper let out an embarrassed snort of laughter and clapped a hand over her eyes. Adorable dimples wrinkled her chin as she tried to suppress a smile, and Dan tried and failed to hold back a laugh.
“I. Hate. You,” she said, her hand still covering half her face as the smile won out.
“Why’s that?” he asked, tugging at her wrist. She kept it firmly in place.
“Because you’re a terror. An absolute terror.”
“What? How?”
With a long, defeated sigh, Harper propped her elbow on the table, careful to keep her eyes shielded. “You make me so nervous, and I don’t know how to deal with it. Not looking at you helps,” she said, gesturing at herself with her free hand. “I let myself relax for one tiny second and think that any of this can actually feel normal, then you do something absurd like smile or call me beautiful and it’s like…” She pressed her lips together like she was about to reveal something too honest.
“Like what?” he asked, his hand circling her wrist and running a coaxing thumb over the back of her hand.
She let him pull her hand away and fixed him with her gaze, searching his face. Harper opened her mouth to speak, but closed it and shook her head with a smile.
“Nervous,” she finally said, letting him know he wouldn’t get anything further. “You make me nervous.”
Dan wanted to pull the unspoken words from her—wanted confirmation that he wasn’t the only one drowning in this tidal wave of feeling.
But instead he sat there and sipped his coffee, letting her lead them.
Her hands returned to play with the checker pieces and Dan watched her body relax a fraction.
“Talk to me about school,” Dan said, handing her a few stray checkers to add to the tower she was building. Harper looked at the pieces and smiled.
“What do you want to know?”
“What are your plans after graduation? You want to do surgery, right?”
Her eyes sparked with excitement, and tenderness flooded his chest. He was so undeniably fucked.
“Surgery all the way,” she said, relaxing back into her seat and smiling as she looked back out the window. “I applied to a bunch of residency programs—New York, California, Texas—and I’m waiting to hear if I matched into any of them. If I don’t get accepted, I’ll do a surgical internship or something like that. I’ll know one way or another in a few weeks.”
Those places were … not exactly close.
“Do you have a top choice?”
She nodded, their eyes meeting in the reflection of the window. “Dwyer’s Hospital in New York.”
“Why there?”
“It’s a level-one trauma center with complex cases, and I’d work holistically with other surgery specialists on bigger ones. With oral surgery, it’s so much more than pulling teeth. Reconstructions, cancer treatments, transplants, it’s endless.” She turned away from the window to look directly at him, her eyes holding an excited wildness that Dan wanted to drown in.