Page 51 of The Fate Factor

Noel

Jamiepushestheladderback in place, and I watch shamelessly as he wipes his hands off on the back of his jeans.

He turns his head and catches me looking. My heart thuds twice in quick succession.

It’s been beating erratically since that moment on the stairs, when he stood to his full height, my hand dropping from his hair, and stared at me like if we weren’t three stories up and he wasn’t nursing multiple injuries, I’d be on my back.

Another shiver runs through me, and I clutch his sweatshirt tighter. “So what’s next, James Dean? A bank heist?”

He steps off of the stack of pallets, smirking. “That’s a lot of snark coming from such a big smile.”

I roll my eyes, but he’s right. The agitation that was chugging in my blood after my mother’s call has burned off like sea smoke, lost to a sunset that looked like a painting and a man just as beautiful.

He steps to my side, bumping me with his shoulder. “Want to go for a drive?”

“Sure.”

It’s a few blocks back to Fortune where he’s parked in the back lot. His car is new and spaceship-like. Fancy enough to convey success without flaunting it. Red and blue lights and scrolling messages light up the dash when he plugs in his phone. The cab has captured his scent and infused it into the air, salt and grass, and I breathe it into my lungs. If it’s true what they say about pheromones, Jamie’s are in full agreement with fate because my legs squeeze together involuntarily.

An Airborne Toxic Event song comes through the speakers, and Jamie steers us out of the city, over the drawbridge. He turns left at the end, heading toward the water, then makes a right, cutting through the community college. “Where are we going?”

“To the beach.”

I pull my heels to the edge of my seat. “It’s dark out.”

“Lucky for us, it’s still there even after the sun goes down.”

“Funny.”

He skips the public lot—though I suppose it would be closed anyway—instead pulling to a stop on a dark stretch of road, beneath a street light that flickers every so often.

Twenty-eight years of muscle memory have me tensing at this dark beach at night, but when he puts the car in park and looks at me with those deep, moody eyes. I’m sucked back into his forcefield. A forcefield that now involves a lot more touching than it did before. Touching that I want more of.

We leave the car on the side of the road, and I take his hand, letting him lead me down a small embankment, through the overgrown dunegrass. The light from the street disappears as soon as we hit the sand, but a harvest moon sits low in the sky, making the water look like it’s lit from below. There’s not much beach with the tide in, and what’s here is black and scattered with broken shells. Jamie kicks one with the toe of his sneaker.

“It’s really dark down here,” I say, my fingers squeezing his.

“Yeah. It’s so the lighthouse doesn’t get polluted with extra light.”

I look out at the rock jetty that leads to Spring Point Ledge. Surf crashes against it violently. “No one knows where we are.”

Jamie pulls to a stop, his head whipping around, eyes wide. “Shit. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Of course you’d be nervous to be here with me—”

I shake my head quickly. “It’s not you. I’m just nervous. Usually. As a rule.”

He watches me for a minute, then digs his phone out of his pocket. Opening the camera, he twirls me around so my back is pressed to his front and extends his arm to snap a selfie of the two of us, his chin set on my head.

“What are you doing?” I laugh.

He types something over my head, then lowers the screen so I can see.

Jamie: Noel and I are at the boat launch.

“My friend Em,” he says. I smile. He texted our picture to her.

She texts back immediately.

Em:I’m taking a piss. Good talk.

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