Page 63 of All I Feel

“You did, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do something nice for you in return.”

I grinned at her. “In that case, I’d love to have dinner with you.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know if you recall, but when I answered the phone earlier, I mentioned that I’d just been getting ready to call you.”

“Oh. That’s right. Why were you going to call me?”

Unable to avoid touching her, I lifted my hand to the side of her face and stroked my thumb along her cheek. “Because I wanted to see if you had any free time this weekend and wanted to spend some of it together.”

“So, this is perfect.”

My grin grew. “It is.”

Tessa sat back in her seat, looking the happiest she had since I’d arrived at the scene of the accident. “Take me home, handsome. And let me feed you.”

I’d do anything she wanted.

And since I particularly liked hearing that endearment from her, I turned on the car and drove to Tessa’s place.

SEVENTEEN

TESSA

“Okay. This surprised me.”

The second half of my day hadn’t gone anything like I’d planned. But even though I’d had the most terrifying experience of my life when I left work today, I couldn’t be upset about where it had led me.

Because I’d been craving this.

For nearly a week now, I’d wanted nothing more than to be able to spend some time with Ace. Until we’d recently started seeing each other more frequently over these last couple of weeks, I hadn’t really known what it was like to miss him.

This past week had given me a taste of that, and it felt like torture. It was about halfway through the week when it became clear to me what I needed to do. Because with the way I felt, knowing how Ace felt about me, and getting the support and encouragement from my friends last weekend, Iwas eager to have a conversation with him about where things were for me.

Ace had been so patient, never once bringing up the conversation since we’d discussed it with one another when he first shared his feelings with me. He’d stay true to his word that he wouldn’t allow it to come between our friendship. At least, I didn’t think it had. Prior to this week, Ace had made time to reach out to me over the phoneandvisit with me. Did he avoid seeing me this week because he wanted to put some distance between us, or was I reading too much into it?

Either way, I guess it didn’t matter. Because I could no longer ignore what I felt, and Ace deserved to know the truth.

But first, I thought we should get through dinner. So, I tipped my chin up and to the side, a smile playing at my lips. “What surprised you?”

He hesitated a beat before he said, “I hadn’t realized you could cook.”

“I’m going to pretend I’m not insulted and that you meant that as a compliment.”

“I did.” He gestured toward his plate. “This is excellent, Tessa.”

I eyed him curiously. “Why would you think I couldn’t cook?”

“It’s not that I thought you couldn’t cook at all.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought you could do basics and reheat stuff. I didn’t know all this was possible.”

Grinning, I shared, “It’s my dad.”

Surprise washed over him. “Pardon?”

“My mom cooks. She’s got quite a few recipes that are excellent, but I learned a lot of my cooking from my dad.When we were younger, my mom spent time working at the dance studio, and since my dad retired from snowboarding not long after Archer was born, he did a lot of the cooking. As I got older, I spent more and more time with him in the kitchen and picked up a ton of recipes.”

Ace’s lips twitched. “See? I’ve always known you were a daddy’s girl—much like Lark—and I guess I assumed something like this was of no interest to you.”