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Steph takes it back and holds it to her chest, looking starry eyed. Then she glances to Ares, who shrugs and holds out a hand.

She practically vibrates with excitement as Ares scrawls his name next to mine, and my stomach does something weird to see my signature next to Ares’. This is the most time I’ve spent with him in years, and now there’s proof, in the form of one autographed postcard, that it happened. It’s an odd feeling, and I can’t tell if it’s good or bad or just a thing that happened.

Steph goes inside to pay for gas, and the four of us unload our bags and start pulling them toward the main thoroughfare.

“How long do you think it’ll take before that postcard ends up on eBay?” Ares asks. He’s talking to Tate and Callan, so I keep my mouth shut.

“Are you kidding?” Tate replies. “She’s going to keep that for so long her grandchildren are going to know about it. She’s going to do her first dance at her wedding to one of Brynn’s songs, and the postcard will be tucked into her bouquet.”

Ares makes a face. “Let’s just get going,” he says. “It’s cold as fuck out here.”

We walk through the snowy evening to the B&B, hoping the thing about there being rooms available is true.

13

ARES

So it turns out ‘rooms’ is an exaggeration.

“We have one room left for the night,” the owner says, throwing me a regretful smile. “It is one of our nicer rooms, though. It might be a bit small for your group, but it’s all we have left.”

“So the rooms thing from the sign isn’t true?” I ask him.

He cringes a little. “It’s the holidays,” he explains. “It’s a very busy time for us.”

“Understandable,” Tate breaks in. He elbows me a little in the side as he steps up to the front desk. “How big is the room? Are there at least separate beds?”

The owner nods. “Oh, yes. It’s one of our nicer suites, so there are two rooms and a bathroom between them.”

Tate smiles and looks between the rest of us. “We’ll take it, won’t we?”

“Sure,” Brynn says. She sounds tired. “It can’t be worse than the last room.”

“Excellent,” the owner replies, looking relieved. “I’ll just need some information from you then.”

We give him everything he needs and pay for the room before taking our stuff upstairs to get settled in.

This place is nicer than the last one, so that’s nice at least. It’s more spacious, and there are two beds in each room. Compared to the last one, that makes it practically a fucking palace.

“We should go grab some food before places start closing up,” Tate says. He looks to Callan, who nods. They take a round of orders and then head out, closing the door behind them.

Once again, Brynn and I are left alone together.

The tension ramps up a notch as we look at each other, and then Brynn turns to start rummaging through her bag, breaking the eye contact.

Even with her not looking at me, I’m still so fucking aware of her. I can hear her breathing and smell her shampoo. She still smells the same way she used to, and that’s doing something crazy to my head right now. I feel like I should say something, if only so we’re not standing here in awkward fucking silence, but what the fuck is there to say?

Tate’s a good buffer for all this weirdness, even if him flirting with Brynn activates some sort of caveman instinct in me. But the alternative is this silence and standing around like we don’t know each other.

“Do you need the bathroom?” I finally ask her.

She shakes her head and doesn’t look up at me. “No, it’s all yours.”

“I’m gonna shower then.”

Brynn doesn’t reply, so I just grab my shit and escape to the bathroom.

Once I’m alone behind a closed door, I hope things will feel less awkward. They don’t. I can still picture the way Brynn looked at me in Steph’s car. The way our eyes met and that moment of perfect understanding passed between us. It’s been forever since we were on the same page about something, and there was this feeling in my chest about it that I haven’t felt in so damn long.