Page 79 of Falling for Mr. October

“Aren’t you going to get dressed?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I’ve become pretty fond of being naked. You seem to like it too.”

“I do,” she says, checking me out with a satisfied smile on her face.

“Tell me you want to do this again,” I say.

Okay, I’m begging.

Because now that I’ve touched her, I can’t imagine going back to before, when I was only allowed to put my hands on her in public.

But if she says no, the answer is no, full stop. My nonna raised all of us kids to have a very clear understanding of the word no.

“Of course I do,” Bianca says.

Thank God.

But I need to be honest with her. She deserves that. “I don’t know what comes next, Bianca. I like you a lot, but my whole life is up in the air. Nothing has been resolved.”

“That’s obvious.”

I have to laugh. “Thank you for that.”

She slides her fingers across my chest in a way that’s certainly going to drive me insane. “We’ll have October. This will be our month to enjoy each other, and then we’ll go back to our regularly scheduled lives.”

I don’t like the sound of that, but I don’t have much of an argument to put up. I don’t live here, and my life is not fully in my own hands. While my grandmother made it clear that she doesn’t want to cut our visit short, it was only ever going to be a visit.

“You’ll give me October?”

“It’s yours,” she says, her stroking fingers driving me mad. They’re barely touching me, but it’s enough.

“I might never figure out what comes next. Maybe I can become Mr. November too.”

She grins and sadly pulls her hand away. “You could read the book Emily gave you. Maybe it’s exactly the thing that would crack all of this wide open for you.”

“Maybe so.” I grin. “But I have to say it’s not doing much for me from the table where it’s been sitting unopened. I was hoping osmosis would take over.”

“That’s only with water.”

“Now you tell me,” I say, rapping my knuckles against the counter.

“You can always count on me to be honest with you, even if we’re lying to other people.” Her expression turns serious. “And since we’re being honest…I know you’re going to leave. You know you’re going to leave. Whether you decide to go to Maine or Los Angeles or wherever so you can become even more famous, I’m not going to trail after you like a lost dog. I’m where I need to be. But there’s no reason we can’t be friends.”

“Friends who fuck?” I ask with a smile.

She smiles back, her eyes glittering in the honeyed light pouring in through the kitchen windows. “Hopefully. But there’s no doubt we just broke the first rule of fake relationships. It was only supposed to be for show.”

“Are you saying you’d like to fuck in public? While I don’t object on principle, I think Mr. Mayor might have us arrested for public indecency.”

She presses her palm to my chest, laughing. “Be serious.”

“Yeah, all right,” I say, grabbing my sweatpants and tugging them on. I can feel her searching gaze on me as I pull on the T-shirt next. “Where to now, boss? Are we getting that chocolate? Maybe go for a hike? Your nonna gave me the day off.”

She hesitates, studying me. “The chocolate first. But after we get it, I think we should find someone to taste-test our s’mores.”

“I had visions of feeding them to you, fake girlfriend.”

She gives me a downright mischievous look, so I shouldn’t be at all surprised by what she says next. “How about feeding one to Luanne?”