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Why couldn’t he just read herin there) But no, Miles was hanging on her anshich was overdue, and simple, and also really, really co She needed a distraction She reached for the baseball cap That way he’d stare at it instead of her red cheeks

"The reason I asked about your bonnet," Miles said before she could give hiht" He held up a pair of buff leather gloves hite tabbed cuffs They were beautiful

"You bought those? For me?"

"Traded for thelove um" He sht they’d match your bonnet"

Shelby couldn’t help it She started cracking up She doubled over and banged on the ground and hooted It felt so good to let go of all that pent-up nervous energy, to release it into the Valentine’s Eve air and just laugh

"You hate them" Miles sounded crestfallen "I know they’re not your normal style, but they were the same color as that bonnet and--"

"No, Miles, that’s not it" Shelby sat back up and sobered when she saw his face Then she started laughing again "I traded the bonnet to get you this" She held up the Dodgers cap

"No way" He reached for it with the air of a kid who couldn’t believe that the presents under the Christmas tree were really his

Silently, Shelby held the gloves in her hands Miles gripped the cap in his After a long ifts on

With the cap tugged tightly over his blue eyes, Miles looked like his old self again, the boy Shelby recognized from a hundred lectures at Shoreline, the boy she’d first stepped through the Announcers with, the boy as, she realized, her closest friend

And the gloves--the gloves were an They fit her perfectly, almost like Miles knew the exact shape of her hands She looked up to thank him, but his expression ?"

Miles scratched his forehead "I dunno Would you mind, actually, if I took the cap off? I realized today I could see you better without it, and I liked it that way"

"See me?" Shelby didn’t knohy, of all times, her voice chose that moment to crack

"Yeah You" He took her hands Her pulse picked up Everything about that moment felt really i

"Miles?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you loves off? I love theht now, I--I can’t feel your hands"

Ever so gently, Miles tugged off the leather gloves, one finger at a tiround and took both of her hands in his again Strong and reassuring and sorin froh of the laurel tree behind theale trilled sweetly Shelby sed Miles took a slow breath

"Do you knohat I thought when Roland said he was going to send us home tomorrow?"

Shelby shook her head

"I thought: Now I get to spend Valentine’s Day in this incredibly roirl I really like"

Shelby didn’t knohat to say "You’re not talking about Luce, are you?"

"No" He watched her eyes, waiting for so about you"

In her seventeen years, Shelby had been kissed by a lot of frogs and a few toads And every tiot to this esture, saying, "Can I kiss you now?" She knew soht that was polite, but to Shelby, it was just a huge pain in the butt She always ended up saying so sarcastic back, and it always just annihilated theto ask if he could kiss her She was terrified he wasn’t going to ask if he could kiss her

Luckily, Miles didn’t leave her too much time for terror

He leaned in very slowly and cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand His eyes were the color of the starry sky above the her face ever so slightly, Shelby closed her eyes

Their lips connected in the sweetest kiss