Page 70 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
“I don’t suppose you have a plan for that?”
I whip out my best “thriller” smile. “We use the south exit…which is going to require some bolt cutters.”
Beckett gives a weary nod as if to say Why am I not surprised? “Why bolt cutters?”
“When I checked the door, it was chained from the outside. Maybe they couldn’t get the automatic locks to work. The bigger problem is that they’ve positioned themselves near the entrance they came through. The south exit is on the far side of the atrium. We’d have to cross the open floor.”
“Unless we go over instead of through.”
I stare at him. “Over?”
“Through the drop ceiling. Die Hard it,” he says with a completely straight face.
“You want to ceiling-crawl again?”
“It worked once.”
“It worked because you’re insane. What if we fall through? There’s no way they’d miss that.”
“It can hold. Trust me. There’s a maintenance cavity up there, built to withstand a little weight. If we can get to the hardware store without being seen, we should be able to grab one of those extending ladders to get up. We crawl above the east corridor—sixty feet or so—drop near the south exit, cut the chains, and we’re out of here.”
I run it through in my head, playing out all the possibilities. The plan has holes. There’s no denying that. But it also has something none of our other plans have had: genuine surprise. Nobody expects their quarry to escape through the ceiling. It’s the kind of act-three move we need.
“I like it,” I say. “I hate it. But I like it.”
“And just think—we’re supporting local businesses.”
That earns a chuckle from me. “Your wallet must be in critical condition after everything we bought last time.”
“Oh yeah. I’m operating on IOUs and moral conviction.”
The laugh gets as far as my chest and stops—held, savored. This man. This ridiculous ceiling-crawling, money-leaving hero of a man.
I definitely picked the right hero for my books. (And we’ll unpack why in some therapy session later.)
“Okay. We wake Cole. We move.”
But he doesn’t move toward Cole. He stays sitting, facing me. Cole’s snoring has shifted to a deep rumble that serves as inadvertent white noise, and the tent feels private. A space outside the crisis.
“Can I see you after this?” he says quietly.
Oh. Um…and I sound like an idiot when I say “See me?” Aw, c’mon, Evie, you can do better than that. “As in a date?” Okay, that wasn’t much better, but?—
“Yes.” There’s no doubt in his answer. It’s steady. His eyes catch mine, holding on, not letting go. “You also said maybe later.” Something happens at the corners of his mouth. A sly smile that steals my breath away. “It’s later.”
I gape at him, wordless, stunned. My heart racing. This is…insane. Twelve hours ago, the very idea of even seeing Beckett Benson was enough to send me into hiding. But now…he’s different. Or maybe he’s been different all along, and here’s where Sutton Blake steps in and says See?
Right. He isn’t the boy who humiliated me so many years ago, and if I’m honest, the man behind the jersey aligns with the man behind the letters. And I can’t help but think that maybe this is exactly how romance works in real life—messy and improbable and surprising.
“I’d like that.”
He leans toward me. Slow. Deliberate. His gaze falls to my lips, back to my eyes. The movement of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing. He lifts a hand, his fingertips grazing my cheek, threading through my hair, tilting my head back to look at him.
He stops. Inches from me. Close enough that I can see individual flecks in his irises—darker blue inside lighter blue, the pattern like ice forming on a lake, a man more complex up close than he ever appeared from the stands.
He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t need to. The question is in the pause—in the inch of air, in the stillness, in the way he holds there and waits. Waits for me to pull back or?—
I answer—almost imperceptibly, my chin lifting a fraction, the smallest possible gesture that closes the smallest possible distance.
