SUMMER
"What are you doing up here alone?" He asked.
His voice was warm but there was something underneath it — something I couldn't immediately place. A different frequency. A current running beneath the familiar easy surface.
"Getting some air," I said. "Shouldn't you be down there? It's your party."
"It's my birthday." He took a step closer. "I can be wherever I want."
I looked at him. The Maddox I knew — the one who cracked jokes at breakfast and played harmonica and called me princess with a grin — was still there. But layered over him was something else tonight. Something that had shifted, the way air shifts before a storm. His eyes were darker in the balcony light, more focused, and he was looking at me with an intensity that I'd never seen from him before.
Not the charm. Not
