Chapter 3

The air inside the vintage car smelled of old leather and his cologne, a sharp, masculine scent that seemed to cling to every inch of the space between us. We had been sitting there for twenty minutes, watching the double feature flicker across the massive white screen, the beam of light cutting through the dust motes dancing in the humid night air. The rest of the crowd had trickled out, leaving only the hum of the generator and the distant chatter of couples packing up their trunks, but we hadn’t moved. We were locked in this suspended moment, this breathless hesitation that had been building since the moment he walked into the reception hall. I shifted in my seat, the leather creaking beneath my thighs. My jacket was slipping off one shoulder, the heavy wool fabric sliding down my arm as I tried to ignore the way his knee was pressed firmly against mine, just above the knee. It wasn’t accidental. I knew he knew it wasn’t accidental. Every time I moved, every time I took a shallow breath, I felt the heat radiating from his leg, a steady, grounding pressure that made my skin prickle. "You're cold," he said.