“This feels like a date and looks like one.” He waited for me to make it around the table. “So, maybe it is a date.”

“It’s not a date,” I hissed. My gaze bounced from him to the dimly lit narrow, convoluted spaces between the tables.

“Why not?” He walked a bit in front of me.

“Because we can’t date,” I told him, my hip bumping into the edge of the table. Cheeks flaming even more, I hastily apologized to the people whose table I’d jarred. “I’m so sorry.”

Zayne turned and quickly assessed the situation. Without saying a word, he placed his hands on my shoulders, guiding me so that I was front of him. We took a couple of steps before he spoke again. “You know I’m teasing you, right?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. Of course he was joking. And of course I was an idiot. “I hate you.”

Chuckling, he squeezed my shoulders. “You wish.”

He had no idea how true that was.

I kept my mouth shut as he steered me out of the packed restaurant and into the balmy night air. I took a second to scan our surroundings. There was an old church across the street and several more restaurants and shops.

Staying close to the buildings as we walked, I glanced at Zayne. That stupid, sexy grin was plastered to his face. Nervous energy buzzed through me. “I can’t believe we were in there as long as we were. We should’ve been out here by now.”

“Possibly, but we’re allowed to have lives,” he replied, but my father would probably disagree with that. “Speaking of having a life, what are some places you want to see tomorrow?”

“Um... I don’t know.” I stepped around a guy on his phone and realized I hadn’t checked my own since I’d texted Jada. “I’d like to see the dinosaurs.”

“That’s in the natural history museum. Has a lot of cool stuff in it. Lots of fossils and artifacts. Even has a butterfly pavilion.”

That sounded pretty. “And I would like to check out the Holocaust museum. Is that near the other one?”

“Yeah, about a fifteen-minute walk. Any place else?”

I nodded. “The African American museum—oh, and the one with the rockets and stuff.”

“The Air and Space Museum.”

“Yeah, that. And I’d like to see some of the memorials,” I went on. “Probably the Washington Monument, too.”

“Sounds like we’ll make a day at the National Mall then.”

“Is that okay?” I glanced at him. “I mean, you’ve probably seen this stuff a million times.”