“You… can keep…” I didn’t think I was out of shape but apparently, I was. “You can keep going,” I rushed out. “I can get back by myself.”

Sacha shot me a look as he moved closer to the side of the building to get out of pedestrian traffic. “No. I’ll walk back with you.”

“Walk back?” That came out sounding as panicked as it was meant to. “The entire way?”

“Yeah.”

All I could do was stare at him. Did he not know I was on the cusp of death?

The sheer terror on my face earned me a laugh from the tall man. “I’m fucking with you. Let’s walk a little, and then we’ll catch a ride back.”

“If… I… wasn’t so…”

He grinned, cutting my threat off. “Let’s go. Are you hungry?”

I nodded.

“Want to get something to eat?”

I managed to nod again.

We walked for almost twenty minutes in silence, taking our time. I was still too out of breath to talk so I focused on calming down. Eventually Sacha hailed a cab and we both climbed in.

It was the choked laugh from the other side of the backseat that had me turning my attention toward him. He was sitting with his back to the corner, a smug smile on his face. “Are you gonna live?”

“Barely.”

His eyebrows went up as he smiled even wider. “You went a lot further than I thought you would.”

Wait a second.

“Julian and I usually only do five miles,” he explained.

I stared at him; there could be no other way to describe what I did besides maybe referring to it as a glare. I sat there with my chest expanding and retracting while still trying to recuperate, processing what the hell had just come out of his mouth. “Are you joking?”

He shook his head.

I kept my gaze on him for a brief second longer, extended my middle finger against my thigh in plain view and turned to face out the window.

Sacha laughed.

Okay, I smiled. A little but not much.

Neither one of us said a word until he instructed the driver to drop us off at the end of a block that didn’t look particularly familiar. “This place is pretty good,” he noted pointing at a decorated glass door as we climbed out of the cab after fighting over how to pay the fee.

I still wasn’t on speaking terms with him, though I’d caught my breath and followed him inside the restaurant, which wasn’t as cool as I would have liked. The smell of roasted chicken made my stomach growl.

He raised his eyebrows at me from the other side of the table after a waitress brought two glasses of water over. “Still mad at me?” he asked.

I narrowed my eyes at him as I took a sip, taking in how he still looked relatively put together and not at all like he’d tackled eight miles half an hour ago. “You run marathons, don’t you?”

“Nah.” He put the glass to his lips, but I could still catch a glimpse of the corners of his mouth. “Half-marathons.”

Half-marathons. “Thanks for telling me that now,” I snorted.

“You didn’t look winded, and I figured you would tell me when you couldn’t go any further.”

I grumbled and shook my head just as the waitress came by to take our order.

She had barely left when the dark-haired man sitting across from me asked, “So, are you on summer break?”

“Nope, I finished school about a month ago. I just… haven’t been able to find a job yet.”

Saying it out loud was weird. I knew it wasn’t unusual to not find a job right after graduating. Half the people that had finished school at the same time as I did were struggling to land one. It didn’t help that the degree I’d gotten wasn’t exactly bursting with employment opportunities either, but it still made me feel a little raw. When I first told my family I wanted to study history, the first thing out of my dad’s mouth had been, “What are you going to do with that degree? Why don’t you do accounting? Or nursing?”