“Clearly, you’re doing a great job,” Parker chuckles.
Vaughn tugs him up from my bed. “Come on, babe. We can hide.”
Parker looks around my small studio apartment.
“Where do you propose we do that?”
Vaughn gestures to the open door on the other side of my bed. “The bathroom?”
“If you think we’re just going to shove ourselves into her bathroom—”
Vaughn tugs his arm again. “Be good, and I’ll make it up to you later.”
I watch my best friend’s face flush pink, from his cheeks to his ears all the way up to his hairline. “Fine,” he mumbles. “We’ll let ourselves out.”
“No sex in my bed,” I chide with a laugh.
“Ugh,” Parker groans. “We’re not going to—”
The doorbell rings again, and I shoo them away as Vaughn pulls Parker into my bathroom. I pat my hair as I take one last look in the mirror hanging off the back of my closet, smoothing my hands down my dress after and telling myself that I have nothing to be nervous about. This is just a normal date, and Noah has already seen all of me.
Doesn’t mean my hand isn’t shaking a little when I reach for my doorknob seconds later.
I don’t know what’s more overwhelming, the sight of Noah or the scent of him. His suppressants have been a thing of the past for a while now, and the full blast of his fresh, clean aroma is dizzying in the best way. It rouses memories of his hands on me and his body covering me, and I have to swallow around a growing lump in my throat as I take in his dark jeans and his soft, black sweater that looks suspiciously like cashmere.
“Well.” I flash him a smile as I look between us, noticing how similarly dressed we are. “Clearly, one of us is going to have to change.”
Noah’s eyes traveling down the length of my body feels like an actual weight, feeling every slow inch as if he’s sliding his finger along my skin. “I hope it’s not going to be you,” he says quietly.
A little shiver passes through me, and I hear a soft sound from behind me that sounds a lot like a snort. I grab my coat quickly, stepping out into the hall and closing the door behind me to join Noah. “You look too good in that sweater for it to be you, so I guess we’re going to be that couple.”
My heart rate kicks up when I realize what I’ve said; it’s definitely too soon to be calling us an actual couple or anything, and just saying the words makes that lump in my throat swell a little larger. Noah seems completely unfazed, though, reaching to thread his fingers through mine before he brings my hand to his mouth to press a kiss against my knuckles.
“I don’t mind,” he says in that same quiet tone.
He tugs me along like we didn’t just have an honest-to-God moment—and I trail behind him, trying to remember what words are.
I’m afraid that if Noah doesn’t do something annoying—like mention model trains on this date—I might be in real trouble of not minding myself.
* * *
?“You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?”
It’s a mild night, for Denver; the temperature is just warm enough that Noah and I are able to walk the sidewalks downtown without shivering in our coats. He’s still holding my hand, something that is definitely new for us, but since I haven’t made any sort of move to extricate my fingers, I have to assume that I like it.
“You’ll see in a second,” Noah chuckles.
“I think now would be a good time to tell you I don’t like surprises,” I grumble.
“Even a good surprise?”
“That’s the thing, how does anyone ever know? Someone says, ‘Oh, it’s a surprise,’ and we’re just supposed to take them at face value that they’re going to, I don’t know, throw us a surprise party instead of stealing our kidney.”
Noah’s eyebrow arches even as his lips twitch. “I do have ready access to the tools, I suppose.”
“Wow. You’re just going to admit it, huh? This whole thing was all an elaborate setup to get a kidney,” I tsk. “There’s probably no Albuquerque job. Just some bad guys you got mixed up with in the black market who—”
We come to a halt after rounding a corner, and nestled under a covered pavilion lined with well-manicured shrubbery are several rows of small food trucks, lined up in a square shape with tables put out in the center of everything.
I quirk a brow at Noah, who’s still smiling softly. “Remember when I said I wasn’t a cheap date?”