Wait With Me (Wait With Me, #1)(48)

“I like it,” he replies.

“Me too,” I state, carrying my pole to sit next to him on the rock. I nudge him with my shoulder. “So don’t sweat the past. Focus on the now. Because seriously, right now, I need help. My bobber disappeared several minutes ago, and I don’t know what the fuck that means.”

“Shit! You got a bite!” he exclaims and stands up, dropping his pole and wrapping his arms around me. “You gotta set the hook.” His hands squeeze around mine on the pole, and he pauses to wait for the bobber to disappear again. After a few seconds, it drops under the water, and he yells right in my ear, “Now jerk it back!”

His arms tense around me as I yank the pole back, and the line goes taut. “You got it! Now reel it in,” he says excitedly and pulls away to watch me with a giant smile.

But honest to God, I’m fucking terrified.

What is going to be on the other end of this hook? It feels massive and heavy, and it’s bending my pole way too much. That can’t be good. How strong are these poles? What kinds of fish live in this lake? Not sharks, of course, I’m not that stupid. But what if I’m going to reel in some disgusting swamp creature that’s like a beaver and a bass that fucked during a full moon and created some kind of terrifying swamp thing that eats people like piranha. Oh my God, are there piranha in Colorado? I should have googled!

“I don’t know about this, Miles,” I whine, cranking the handle and reeling the line in inch by nerve-wracking inch.

He grabs the fishing net behind us and shuffles down the boulder to get closer to the water. He looks up and gives me a thumbs up. “You’re doing great! You look so fucking hot!”

“Really?” I smile a little, then frown at how shallow that is to make me happy at this moment. I need to read more literature.

My face contorts when the end of my line pops out of the water at last. “Are you kidding me?”

Miles’s raucous laughter echoes off the fucking mountains as he leans out to scoop my catch into the net. “Babe, you did it! You caught something!”

He pulls my catch up onto the rock, and he’s laughing so hard, he can’t speak. He keeps starting a sentence and then stopping, his body buckling over with hysterics.

I’m not laughing.

My tone is flat when I say exactly what he’s trying to say. “I caught a fucking bicycle tire.”

He’s roaring now, dropping down on his haunches and covering his eyes with his hands.

I’m glad he’s having such a great time because I am pissed. Really frickin’ pissed. “A tire? What the hell, Colorado? Way to keep it classy!” I shout to no one in particular. “God, I thought this was some great outdoors experience, and I seriously just reeled in a lousy old tire. My hands hurt!”

My last comment sets Miles off again, and I start to worry about him getting enough oxygen during his fit down there. Finally, he swipes tears away from his eyes. “Babe, how can you not see the irony of this moment? It’s a tire! You’re a smut writer who writes in a Tire Depot. This is fucking kismet.”

Well, when he puts it like that, I can’t help but see a little silver lining. I set my pole on the ground and move down the boulder to inspect my catch. I look up at Miles and ask, “Think I can mount this in my new office?”

He nods and smiles. “Fucking right, you can. I’ll help.”





“Are you ever going to tell me about this new book you’re writing that requires all this painstaking research?” I ask Mercedes as I scrape away the remnants of our burgers on the grate over the fire.

It’s dark out now, the night air full of the sounds of nature. Crickets chirping, owls hooting. The wind rustling the trees in the distance. Occasionally, you can hear the gentle waves lapping on the shore of the lake. And with the way the wind is blowing, I can’t even hear the other campers at their sites, so I get the illusion of complete and total privacy. All-in-all, a perfect day off work.

Mercedes and I went camping.

And fuck me, it was fun. She’s got a great attitude about pretty much everything. She even tried to bait her own hook at one point. She failed, but at least, she tried. We had some lunch, then went for a hike and worked up a sweat. Then we worked up another sweat back in the tent. We napped after that, and honestly, it was just one of those perfect summer days that you never want to end.

But looking at her in the lawn chair next to me, her red hair out of her braids, face glowing in the campfire light, cold beer in her hand, full moon above—I think the nighttime is shaping up pretty perfectly as well.

“It’s about a mechanic,” she answers finally.

“Your book is about a mechanic?” I ask, my eyes wide with total disbelief. “You’re fucking with me.”

She shakes her head. “Nope. The idea just sort of hit me.”

“When did it hit you exactly?” I ask, taking a sip of my beer while blatantly baiting her. She blushes, full-on blushes, and I feel a strong desire to pull her onto my lap just to feel the weight of her on top of me. “Tell me,” I urge.

She rolls her eyes. “I, um, was maybe ogling at you in the shop one day.” She covers her face with her hands and pulls her plaid shirt up over her cheeks to hide her mortification.

“Which day?”

She shrugs. “It was before you and I started…friends with benefitting. You looked so hot and sweaty, and suddenly, this character exploded in my head, and before I knew it, I had outlined a new story.” She pins me with nervous eyes.