Page 30 of Tempting Fate

Chapter Fourteen

Emerson

“Hey!” Patch says as he approaches the table. His face is flushed, eyes bright. “I’m glad you could make it.”

I want to say are you, but then I also want to give in to the fluttering, excited feeling low in my stomach. I watch hungrily as Patch removes his jacket and hangs it over the back of the chair. He pushes up the sleeves of his jumper as he sits down, and for a second too long, my gaze lingers on his forearms.

I ended up texting him on Sunday, while Jamie was out at dinner with his friends. Nick fell asleep on the sofa and so I was sitting there for a while, considering calling Cate because her perspective on this whole thing might have helped me out, and then before I knew it, I was sending Patch a message that we should meet up sometime this week.

It’s Monday now. Not even twenty-four hours since I texted him, but I can’t mock his eagerness, not when I’m inexplicably feeling it myself.

And my heart hurts for Jamie as well. Not because I feel bad about spending time with Patch, necessarily, but that I want him here. I can’t explain that, either. Just that I feel I should turn my head and he’ll be sitting here with me. With us.

“This is a nice place,” Patch says, clearly a little nervous at my silence. “I’ve been here a few times. Not on dates. I mean, not really on dates, just—”

“Patch,” I say, and he falls silent. “I want to be here. I really wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

“Good. That’s good.” He grins and picks up the menu.

God, he really means it. I force myself to push thoughts of Jamie aside. He wants me to do this, and I have to believe him, have to trust that he knows himself. I shake off all that and pick up my own menu, even though I got here twenty minutes early and have already looked through it three times.

We’re out for a late lunch at a cute café that seems to be about halfway between where Patch and I live. I order a coffee and a sandwich with chips when the waiter comes over. Patch orders a burger and a milkshake, and as soon as the waiter is gone, all his attention is back on me.

“Didn’t have to work today?” he asks.

“My hours are pretty flexible,” I reply. I feel kind of bad about the pretence I’m maintaining regarding work, but I really don’t want any of them finding out about my social media stuff. There’s a reason I keep my face out of videos. I’m proud of the work I do, that I’m trying to find something deeper, but I know from bitter experience that most people don’t see it that way and I hardly know these people at all. “What about you? Are you at the pub tonight?”

“Nah. That’s three nights a week—I basically picked up Dax’s shifts when he left. I do the odd job here and there for friends of mine, but I don’t have, you know, like a career.”

“Lots of things are more important than that.”

“You’re telling me.” He grins. “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

Dread faintly strangles me for a moment, though I’m careful not to let it show on my face. It never mattered. Not that I was going to inherit everything; my older brother, Gideon, was groomed to be my father’s heir. Just that it was a given that I would study economics or politics and then use all those connections from school and university and my parents to get a well-paid job doing absolutely nothing of use.

I like to think of Dad spinning in his grave, sometimes. But he knew what I was going off to do the moment I graduated. I made sure of that.

“Uh, not sure,” I say. I search my mind for something. Anything. “Maybe a vet?”

“You like helping animals?”

“I like animals. Not sure I would have ever made it through all of that, though. Seems a lot sadder than most people like to believe.”

Patch sighs in sympathy. “True.”

“What about you, then?”

He grins again. “Firefighter, for sure. But yeah, I think only the kind that rescued kittens from trees for little old ladies.”

I laugh. I can imagine him doing just that—or in a firefighter’s uniform, or half out of it. My mouth goes dry. “Well, doubt we’d have ended up here if we both followed our childhood dreams.”

“Maybe not, huh.”

Our food comes, and talk progresses to Dax, and then Patch’s sister, Millie, and her family. The smile Patch wears when he talks about his nephews makes my heart race. I’ve never thought about kids of my own—why would I, with the cold, distant childhood I had—but I’m struck by the image of Patch with some little rugrat on his shoulders, and for a second, I can hardly breathe.

“So what did Cate say when you told her you were moving away for a while?”

The food is finished, and I’m onto my second coffee. Patch has a water, though I’m still eyeing his empty milkshake glass—it looked incredible, and I think I want to order one.