Page 168 of Trust Me

“Of course not, baby. This doesn’t have anything to do with the job. It’s not really about you at all. Or it wouldn’t have been, but now I have to take us into consideration too.”

“So, not wanting to go back . . .” My lips pulled to the side as I processed his words. “You don’t want to leave.”

“This is home,” he whispered. “Not just this house or the city.”

“Your family. You want to be with them.”

He nodded, then hung his head. “I made a mistake leaving. I shouldn’t have even applied to out of state colleges, but I saw my brother leave when he turned eighteen, and I figured flying the nest would help me grow. Maybe it did, but I don’t think that’s a journey meant for me. If it makes me lame to want to stay near my family for the rest of my life, then I’m a damn square.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t have any idea.”

Swallowing back my nerves, I pulled out my phone and opened up my last webpage. When I held it out, he took it with a curious expression. He scrolled through it, his eyes darting back and forth as he read.

“This is in New York,” he said, as if he didn’t understand.

“You’re intelligent, Broku. Figure it out.”

“And you’re insane.” He tossed the phone onto the mattress beside me. “You can’t make plans like that. Not after a week.”

“I have a year left in my grad degree,” I explained slowly. “I could try getting into the PhD program at Harmon, but there’s nothing holding me there. You also have a year until you finish your BA, right?”

He nodded. Taking his hands again, I smiled. He stared at my face, and with every second, his expression softened.

“If you want, you can apply for a grad program nearby,” I suggested. “Yeah, it’s early, but I think when this time rolls around next year, we’ll have a pretty damn good idea whether this is working.”

I let go of his hand so I could touch his trembling lip. To see such a strong man reduced to something so fragile made something fierce rise in my chest. He just wanted to be with his family, and by some cosmic luck, he was factoring me into his decision. That was enough reason for me to commit to the idea of packing my shit and moving across the country.

“A year,” he said. “You sure you’ll know by then?”

“To be honest—” I paused, trying not to sound like a maniac. “I’d consider hauling ass out here right now, but that would make me look crazy. And I’d be remiss not to admit that it would be indulging an unhealthy level of impulsivity. So, yeah. A year.”

His shoulders relaxed noticeably, like a massive weight had been taken from him. I’d always thought that in a relationship, you carried that sort of thing for your partner, but I felt just as light as he stroked my fingers with his thumbs. Maybe we’d just released it back into the universe, leaving both of us content and ready to fight another day.

“My dad said my mom found a little bit of luck when Dr. Matteo came into the hospital. He also thinks it’s karma.”

“Probably the latter,” I noted. “Your mom’s done a lot of good in her life.”

“Oli, baby.” He used one hand to cup my jaw, bringing me close enough to kiss, but I just waited for him to speak again. “You’re my little bit of luck.”

A grin curled my lips, borderline splitting them. “Remi calls me a lucky bastard all the time.”

“Don’t ever tell him I said this, but he sometimes knows what he’s talking about.”

“I like it better when you say it.”

He laughed, finally clearing the last of the gloom around us. “Come on. I don’t want to spend the rest of the week sequestered away in my room.”

“Yes, chef.”

His eyes burned as he watched me jump to my feet. Before we could get carried away by the intense emotions that were quickly shifting into desire, I held my hand out to him. There was a certain simplicity to his touch that woke something deeper than lust or even love. It reached right through to my soul, tethering it to him after it had spent the last twenty-four years bouncing around from place to place, never truly settling.

I belonged here. With him, but also with his family, in this city that had raised him. And if we made it to that year mark, I hoped it would accept me the way they all had.