It Takes Two by Erin Nicholas

didn’t react but she could tell he was fighting the urge to grimace. “I’ve never done model planes.”
    Wow, what a shocker. “Or jigsaw puzzles,” she suggested brightly. “You could start small with like a thousand pieces.”
    “A thousand- piece puzzle ?” he repeated.
    “Sure. You can work up to the five-thousand-piece ones.”
    She could see his mind spinning, imagining sitting still long enough to put one thousand tiny shapes together to make a picture of a mountain scene or a field of flowers. She bit her lip to keep from laughing. She couldn’t imagine it either.
    But his panic over doing something quiet and still wasn’t funny. It was the reason that he wouldn’t last twenty-four hours with her in her real world.
    “Um, I was thinking—”
    “Crosswords?” she asked. “Yeah, that might be better. Or Sudoku.”
    “No.” Finally, he breathed. “Iz, none of those things are me.”
    And reality crashed in—for both of them.
    “Babe, I’m—”
    “I know,” she snapped. “I know those aren’t you. That’s the point. They are me, though. You’d rather be yelling at a game or rodeo or tractor pull.” She crossed her arms. “And I don’t even understand that last one. No one can hear you over the stupid tractors anyway and it’s not like it matters who wins. I mean it’s not like there’s a Great Tractor Pull Off and—”
    She realized she was ranting about tractors and stopped.
    Shane was looking at her with one eyebrow up.
    She took a deep breath. “I bet you wouldn’t last even three days at the cabin.”
    “Cabin?”
    Ah, crap. She hadn’t meant to say that. She grimaced. “A cabin. You wouldn’t last three days at a cabin.”
    He wasn’t buying that. “Why are we talking about random cabins?”
    “It was an example of a quiet, peaceful place that you would hate.”
    “Isabelle,” he said, watching her closely. “What cabin are you talking about?”
    She sighed. “The cabin I’m going to the day after tomorrow.”
    “Why are you going to a cabin?”
    “For…a retreat.” Kind of. “It’s my boss’s cabin.”
    “Where’s the cabin?”
    “The Black Hills.”
    “You’re flying out to Rapid City?” he asked.
    “Driving.” She knew immediately that she’d messed up. But she did try to keep the lying to the bare minimum necessary.
    “With a bunch of people from work?”
    She should just say yes. She knew where this was going. But she couldn’t. “No, alone.”
    He looked at her for several heartbeats. Enough time to clearly communicate that he didn’t think that was okay. “What time are you leaving?”
    She knew exactly where this was going. “Not sure. But early. Or whenever I get around to it. But probably really early.” Shane didn’t do early mornings. Mostly because he did late nights so well.
    Shane moved in close, not touching her, but looking down at her with a combination of exasperation and affection. “Good try. What time are you leaving?”
    She crossed her arms. “Whenever I want to. This is my trip and it doesn’t matter to anyone else what time I leave.”
    “You’re not driving clear across the state of South Dakota by yourself and you’re certainly not spending the night in some remote cabin you’ve never been to by yourself.”
    “Oh, really?” She hated being told what to do. Shane did it all the time anyway.
    “Yes. Really.”
    “I’m not sure what you’re going to do about me leaving whenever I want to.”
    Of course, when she said stuff like that Shane took it as a challenge.
    “I’ll camp out on your porch if I need to so you don’t leave without me knowing about it.”
    “You can’t go. You’re not invited.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I’ll be… working .” He couldn’t come to the cabin with her. She was trying to get away from him so she could think. And relax. She hadn’t felt relaxed since he’d first asked her to move in with him over two months ago.
    She also couldn’t have him around while she