Page 13 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Something crosses her face. Not a smile. But a ceasefire. “Buy a book. We’re even.”
I buy two. She signs neither.
The ballroom is emptying. Outside the windows, Minneapolis has disappeared under a white curtain so thick the streetlights look like dying stars. I’m retrieving my coat when Coach materializes with a look that says he’s about to ruin what’s left of my evening.
“Hey, Beckett. I need a favor.”
“Name it.” The words slip out before I have the chance to think better of them.
“Everly caught an Uber here. The snow’s getting pretty bad, and I’d give her a ride home, but I caught a ride here with Coach Jace, and he lives the opposite direction. I don’t want her riding with some stranger if she gets stuck in a snowdrift…” He doesn’t ask, but the question lingers there, hanging expectantly in the air.
“Coach. Trust me, she does not want me to drive her.”
“She doesn’t have to want it. She has to get home alive.” He gives me the Look. “You owe me, Benson.”
It’s a low blow. Accurate, but low.
“Yeah, all right. I’ll get her home.”
He slaps my shoulder. “Good man.”
I find her at the signing table, wrestling a box that has abandoned its structural ambitions. The cardboard bottom is sagging, books dipping toward the center. She’s holding her phone with her free hand, the Uber app glowing with that smug No rides in your area message.
“Let me get that.” I reach for the box just as her gaze snaps up.
She swerves. “I’ve got it.”
“You demonstrably do not.”
“I have a degree in English literature. I understand the physics of a box.”
“Those two things are not in any way related, so…”
I reach again for the box. She adjusts her grip. My hand lands on hers. Her fingers are freezing, mine are too warm, and the contact jolts through me like grabbing an electric fence—and then the bottom surrenders.
Books spill everywhere. Thriller on Ice copies shoot across the ballroom floor like someone dumped a bucket of pucks at center ice.
Nice one, Beckett.
Her eyes snap to mine. Daggers. Scratch that—ice daggers. “I’ve got it.”
She drops to the floor at the same time I do, and we barely avoid cracking heads.
“Just let me help?—”
“I’m good.”
“I think your books would beg to differ?—”
“If you would just let me?—”
“The box is in three pieces. Three.”
Abruptly, she sits back on her heels, arms full of novels, and blows a strand of dark hair off her forehead. And then—against what appears to be every cell in her body’s wishes—she sighs.
“You okay?”
She shakes her head. “This night needs to be over.”
