Early night, guys. I hope that’s okay.”
Grace peered at Josh closely for a moment, thinking he looked like he used to when they were pulling a job during AP Exams and play rehearsal, all at the same time—peaked and too pale and like the shadows under his eyes were growing caves. Well, it had been a big couple of days. Josh would get color soon. If Vancouver had more sun, he’d be pink.
Still distracted by Josh’s paleness, Grace grunted and shucked off his trackies and Hunter’s hoodie, which he folded up together and stacked on top of the suitcase before sliding into the bed in his T-shirt and socks.
“Fine,” he muttered, taking his phone from the charger and pulling up a game.
“Got any movies on that?” Hunter asked, and Grace nodded, glaring at him suspiciously. “I’m going to go shower. Pull up something not sucky and we can watch it.” A faint smile appeared on his lean mouth. “You willing to let me share your earbuds?”
And it hit Grace then—Josh might be right. This was the sort of thing Grace had been thinking about on the plane but had been too afraid to ask for.
“Yeah,” he said, his smile getting wider by the second.
Hunter winked and disappeared into the bathroom with a change of clothes, and when he came back, that lean body slid in behind Grace’s, and he snuggled backward. Hunter’s arm came around his chest, and Hunter rested his chin on Grace’s shoulder while together they watched an episode of Stranger Things. About fifteen minutes in, Grace thought, I can hear him breathing in my ear. I’ll never be able to sleep like this.
He didn’t remember the next part of the show, though, because he’d fallen asleep.
“SO?” TABITHA asked two days later. “What did you guys find out?”
“Didn’t you talk to your grandfather?” Grace asked, reluctant to come out of the place he’d been. They’d finished rehearsal, and the rest of the cast had gone home. Grace, lulled by the familiar smell of the wooden flooring and dancer’s sweat, had let his mind wander.
He’d slept like a baby that night in the hotel. His seat had been next to Josh on the plane, and he’d watched, surreptitiously, as Hunter read his spy novel across the aisle with only the occasional wink in Grace’s direction to show he knew Grace was watching him.
They’d arrived in Chicago in the late afternoon, and Danny and Felix had fed them and partially debriefed them and then let everybody go to bed because they were beat.
Hunter had shown up in Grace’s room, uninvited, and had slid in behind him in the queen-sized bed Grace had slept in during high school. It wasn’t a bad room—Julia had done it art deco style, with broad lines and bold colors. It didn’t look like a little kid slept there, and the dorm Grace had shared with Josh hadn’t been bad either.
He was safe here.
And when Hunter had wrapped his arms around Grace’s shoulders, he’d felt even safer.
And now, after an exhaustive seven-hour rehearsal for the upcoming show, Grace was hungry and aching pleasantly and wondering if the family would be discussing what happened in Vancouver without him.
And if Hunter was going to do that thing they’d done in Vancouver in the hotel room alone again.
“I didn’t want to bother him,” Tabitha said, sounding sad. “He’s not young, Grace. He was beat last night, and I left him to sleep in this morning.”
Artur had shown up for the last two hours of the seven-hour rehearsal, putting his seal of approval—or his scowl of “more practice!”—on every dancer in the show. He’d disappeared to the office across the hall to finalize the venue and the ticket sales for the debut in two weeks.
Grace cast a hunted look over his shoulder before turning back to her. “He was very busy,” he said, “and very surprised to realize you’d talked my whole family into helping him.”
“I thought that was supposed to be a secret,” she muttered, crossing her arms.
“Well, someone broke into his room, and when I stopped him, the secret sort of got out.”
Tabby’s expressive brown eyes widened, and her lips parted slightly. “Uhm… someone broke into the room?”
“You didn’t get that far?” Grace asked, trying to remember what, exactly, he’d said to Tabitha about the trip during the day.
“Grace, you had better start at the beginning!”
Grace let out a sigh. “Maybe you can just come to the family meeting tonight,” he said, rubbing the spot between his eyebrows