the drip off the back of my hand that I hadn’t seen.
“You and these things are dangerous,” he murmured.
I felt his lick deep in my core.
“I’m smiling about the fact that my brother just said he was close to Florida when my mom and dad have been giving him shit for the last ten minutes about a mission he refuses to say he’s on,” I explained.
He grumbled out an ‘oh,’ but kept his eyes on something across the walkway from us.
Charles.
Charles who was close enough to be listening to our every word.
Instead of asking Slate about him, I looked over and up at him and said, “Are you ready to go? I want to go get a nap in before we go back to the park tonight to ride the rest of our rides.”
We didn’t have any definite plans tonight—or today at all, really.
Everyone that had come with us had eventually split off into their own smaller groups. The only thing that we did at this point was meet up for dinner.
“You’re dripping again,” he murmured.
I looked down at the drip that had made its way all the way under my Magic Band—the band that I used for everything—to get on rides, to get into my hotel room, to buy lunch or dinner—and sighed.
“Who knew Florida would be this hot right now?” I grumbled as I took the Magic Band off and placed it on the seat beside me so I could get at the ice cream underneath it.
“Pretty much everyone,” Slate said. “I’m not sure Florida gets any hotter or colder than this, to be honest. I think it’s always this temperature. Maybe a little bit cooler, but not much. That’s why old people retire down here.”
I finished off the rest of my ice cream and stood up to toss my popsicle stick into the trash.
Slate followed me and waited for me to dispose of it before reaching for my hand.
My hand once again started to pound, and I went to say something to him but once again saw Charles out of the corner of my eye, standing awfully close.
I frowned.
“Let’s go,” I murmured.
We’d lose him in the crowd for sure.
And we did, kind of.
Which was when I decided to ask Slate my most important question.
“Slate, what are we doing?” I questioned.
Slate frowned down at me as we dodged a mother with a triple-wide stroller and three very pissed off triplets wailing away in their seats.
“Going to the hotel like you suggested?” he frowned.
“No,” I licked my dry lips, tasting salt and ice cream. “I mean, us. What are we doing?”
He pulled me behind him when a father and his son nearly took me out.
When he pulled me back in front of him, he said, “I think you and me both know exactly what’s going on here.”
I growled in frustration. “Slate.”
He sighed. “This, you and me, is something that I’m kind of afraid to define because the things I’m feeling, I’m not sure that there’s a definition for it just yet. Okay?”
“Like, you want to be a couple, though? You want this to continue when we get home?” I pushed.
He pulled me off to the side of the flow of traffic leaving the park, and then looked down into my eyes as he said, “This most definitely is going to continue once we get home.”
The certainty in his voice had a chill racing down my spine.
I looked over my shoulder, wondering if we were alone, only to see Charles’ pissed off face as he rushed toward us.
His family was practically running to keep up with him.
“Let’s go,” I urged. “I’m ready for a nap.”
Slate’s eyes went hot. “A nap?”
My lips twitched. “Um, yeah.”
His eyes twinkled as he took my hand into his and urged me forward. “I really wish we didn’t have a twenty-minute bus ride back to our hotel.”
Or a fifteen-minute wait for the bus to even arrive.
We’d literally walked up to the bus stop just as the hotel shuttle that ran every twenty minutes pulled away.
Perfect.
What was even more perfect was that Charles followed us to the same damn line.
It was only after we loaded the bus and finally took our seat that I asked what was on my mind.
“Who is that?” I whispered quietly so the man still behind us with his family wouldn’t hear.
They’d literally followed us all the way out of the park and onto the same bus.
“That’s Charles,” he whispered. “The baby daddy.”
The baby daddy.
Holy shit.
But that still didn’t explain his open hostility