Page 94 of Tangled Up In You
“Amazing.” She laughed, and then reached up to cup the back of her neck. “Cold.”
He ruffled her haircut from behind; it fell a few inches above her shoulders. “I don’t want to declare this too early,” he said, picking a stray hair off her shoulder, “but of the single haircut I’ve ever given, this might be the best.”
She laughed, turning to face him, and reached beside him for the other objects in the bag. “And now,” she said, looking down at the box, “looks like I’m going ‘Downtown Brown.’”
He frowned at the box. “No.”
“Yes.”
He flopped back onto the mattress, but he was smiling. They were desperate to get outside, and there was only one way that was going to happen.
Their plan was to duck out in the late morning, during her father’s scheduled press conference in front of the hotel, when every one of the scores of reporters was expected to be congregated at the fountains outside.
Fridge would escort, walking behind them, with another agent in plain clothes walking in front. Even though their destination was an ice cream shop only two blocks away, it was the only way the hulking guard would let Ren out of the building.
Edward stepped up beside her in front of the mirror in their room, waiting for the knock to let them know their security was ready.
“Holy sh—You look hot,” Edward said, smoldering at her.
“Hot?” She covertly sniffed under her arm.
“I mean you look good,” he said, laughing. “Gorgeous. Sexy as hell.”
“Oh.” Never in her life had she been called sexy before meeting Edward, and she felt heat climb up her neck and consume her face. She ran a hand over her hair—which came out much darker than she’d expected, but Edward insisted he loved it, saying it made her eyes seem even greener.
She didn’t know if hair could be sexy, though. Just like she’d never believed that her hair could be meaningful, or hold magical, untold powers. It had always just been hair. And the minute Edward had cut it off, it was no longer even hers.
They stared at their reflections, and she wondered if maybe when he called her sexy he was talking about the fancy sunglasses and pretty white sundress someone brought for her to wear. She’d heard that Dr. Audran refused to hand over the Polaroid of her from his immunology class to the news, and for that she was eternally grateful. It meant that the only pictures circulating of her were the one from her student ID and an old one that Tammy took years ago when Ren was helping out at the five-and-dime, which showed a girl with very long, very blond braided hair, jean shorts, a too-big T-shirt, and sneakers, laughing as she reached for a box on a high shelf. Ren hoped the fancy outfit and radical change in her hair would keep her anonymous, at least until the initial attention let up. She didn’t see herself when she looked in the mirror now, and she didn’t think that was a bad thing.
She’d very much like to be someone else right now.
She looked up to see Edward’s reflection smiling at her.
He’d been given a Yankees baseball hat, dark sunglasses, and a sweatshirt with an NYU graphic. She knew the torso beneath it by heart because she’d spent hours at night memorizing it with her hands and lips. His jeans hung low and slim on his strong hips. The photo circulating of him was one from last fall, midsprint on the soccer pitch. Taken together with all the media accolades that Ren would not have been found if it hadn’t been for him, the bunching muscles visible in the photo made him look like a superhero. She had never wanted something as instinctively as she wanted him.
She wasn’t sure she could say it yet, but she was pretty sure she loved him, too.
“You good, Sunshine?” he asked.
She turned to him, pressing up against his body. “I’m great. I’m about to get ice cream.”
Ren stared out through the spotless front window, letting her feet kick against the legs of the high countertop stool. “I probably can’t go back to Corona, huh?”
Edward took a long lick of his double-decker mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone, then gazed sidelong at her while he swallowed. “I think you can do whatever you want. You want to be a student? Be a student. You want to write a book and sell it for a bazillion dollars? Do that. You want to buy your own farm in New Hampshire?” He waved his hand forward, like You get the idea. “And you want to be Ren, or Grace, or someone entirely new? It’s all up to you.”
She sucked on her spoon, letting the ice cream melt on her tongue. Just outside the shop window, Fridge’s towering form cast a long shadow across the entrance as he casually pretended to read a newspaper. She wasn’t sure whether it was because it wasn’t really ice cream weather today or no one dared cross his hulking path, but she and Edward had the whole place to themselves. “I want to be Ren.”
He nodded. “Good.”
“But…I think Ren Koning.”
“You know Chris will cry when he hears that,” Edward said, eyes twinkling with a grin.
“He’s tenderhearted,” she said, with a sweet defensiveness.
“Now we know where you get it.”
Ren smiled at this, realizing how much she was growing to like being compared to her father.