Page 103 of Dream Chaser
Me:
Hope you have a great time with your Grandand friends in Bama. Thanks for cooking for us tonight, and for the grill. It will have a home on the rooftop soon. Safe travels, Skinner.
It’s not loaded, not needy. Just … there. Honest.
The dots appear instantly. I blink.
GRIFFON:
Meet me downstairs in ten.
I stare at the screen. Then again. Then one more time.
Because what the hell doesthatmean?
But my heart already knows. It’s sprinting ahead of logic, tugging at my ribs, my breath.
I don’t even bother fixing my hair. I just tiptoe down the stairs like it’s rigged with motion sensors, careful not to wake either of them. I even pause by the kitchen, debating if I’m insane.
Then I catch my reflection in the window.
Yeah. Insane. But going, anyway.
I head down the stairs and almost jump out of my skin when I see him standing in the doorway between the paper and the stairwell.
“How did you—” I blink up at him, pulse skipping. “Did I leave the door unlocked?”
“I left the one I dipped out earlier unlocked,” Griffon says, his voice low, unapologetic, “hoping to grab a minute with you.”
A minute?
He pulls me into the press space before I can answer and shuts the adjoining door behind us. He then walks over like it’s nothing—like I’m not vibrating inside—and sits on the edge of one of the old desks like he belongs there. Like he belongshere.
My heart is in my throat, punching every syllable of his next words.
“If you told me to pound salt, I’d have locked it back up,” he says. “But I was betting on this. This fucking connection, Iz. It’s no shit. You know it, and so do I.”
I fold my arms across my chest before I even think about it—the only armor I have on. “You were betting on this?”
He chuckles softly. “Hell, Oz asked if you and I were a thing.”
Of course he did.
I make a face. His grin grows.
“Gonna guess so did the girls.”
“Worse,” I mutter, wishing I just pretended to be asleep to avoid this conversation.
He cocks a brow. “Sarah?”
“Dad, actually.”
His laugh is full-bodied, unguarded. It scrapes over every nerve I’ve spent the last twelve hours trying to calm. “Swear to God, Iz, I didn’t plan that,” he says, sobering. “But?—”
“I believe you,” I cut him off. “So yeah, I was a dick and … sorry.”
His eyes soften, but there’s something wild behind them, too. “Gonna circle back and ask what your dad said,” he says, voice rough, “but first, I’m gonna say what I came here to say.”
