Page 18 of Only Be Mine

“Not yet,” I deadpanned. “But there’s still time.”

He chuckled, his eyes warm. “You really love it though, don’t you? Design.”

I shrugged, suddenly aware of how exposed I felt. “When clients aren’t insane. Yeah. I like taking something ugly and making it feel like someone belongs there.”

“That tracks,” he said. “You kind of did that with my living room already.”

I blinked. “What?”

“The IKEA disaster,” he said. “You kept talking about flow. Sightlines. How the space would breathe better if the couch wasn’t blocking the window.”

I groaned. “I was not redesigning your living room.”

“Sure,” he said, lifting his glass. “Conversation. With measurements.”

“You were listening?”

“Dangerously.”

The drinks arrived. My milkshake was ridiculous; whipped cream, pink foam, sweetness cut with something sharp. His whiskey glowed amber in the low light.

“To coincidences,” he said, lifting his glass.

Not a date.

Not a date.

Not a…

I clinked my glass against his anyway. “To temporary bad decisions.”

We drank.

The sharp buzz of alcohol slid under my skin in a slow, pleasant wave. Not enough to make me reckless. Just enough to loosen all the places that had gone tight from worrying about this.

“So,” he said, “what do you do for fun when you’re not rescuing helpless men from flat-pack furniture?”

“Dancing,” I said immediately. “Going to clubs. Loud music. Lights. Sweaty strangers.”

His mouth quirked. “That fits.”

“Fits what?”

“The way you move when you’re nervous,” he said. “Like your body’s itching to do something bigger than sitting still.”

I stared. “You noticed that?”

“Hard not to.”

I told myself the warmth in my chest was from the alcohol. Not him seeing me so clearly.

“What about you?” I asked. “Besides rescuing damsels in distress?”

He smiled, glancing down. “Hiking. Designing. Building things. Keeping Baby from eating my socks.”

“Full-time job?”

“Basically.”