Page 148 of Love Felt Like This

“What?” I ask. An awkward laugh tickles up my throat. “Why? What would we even do?”

“Not sure. Dinner? Movie? Hell, you can get in a pretty dress, and I’ll get myself looking even half as good, and we can go out. Eat pancakes, maybe. Whatever you want to do.”

Nana shuffles out of her room behind a running Ava, who leaps into Griffin’s arms.

Griffin tilts his head to the side in question, squinting as if trying to read my mind.

“B?”

Dinner and a movie? I’m so close to pitching…it feels like there’s no time left. Not for things like that. There’s never enough time with Griffin.

“Griffin, I…I can’t.” I hate the words, even as they leave my mouth. “I have to work. I want to but…” I want time with Griffin. I want it all.

“Then we’ll work,” he says. “You and me.”

“What? But we always do that,” I say on a laugh.

“And I always enjoy it.”

Nana, now looking between us with a way-too-eager smile, says, “Maybe it’s not a bad thing if you have a friend on Valentine’s Day, Bevvy.”

Griffin lifts a single wicked eyebrow.

Friend isn’t the word I’d use now.

I’m not sure Griffin would either.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Under Any Sky

Griffin

It’s Valentine’s Day, and every restaurant we drove by showed people dressed to the nines. But Beverly and I are in shrouded baseball caps as we scour the craft store. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s the first time I’ve left the Elk Grove mountaintop to explore other parts of North Carolina, and despite it being risky, it’s hard to care much about potential paparazzi when Beverly is giving me a private tour of the craft aisle.

“Ava would go nuts here,” she says. “I mean, look at this!” She holds up a tiny unpainted bird, not unlike the one Ava has back home made by Tom: Tom the bird, of course.

I run a palm over my beard. “She’s probably already going nuts tonight without all…this.” I gesture around to the different shades of yarn, acrylic, and beads.

Beverly laughs. “Oh, she’s definitely knee deep in pancakes right now.” She moseys to the next aisle, her ponytail bobbing out of the gap in her baseball cap. I, a desperate man, follow.

I’m not one for Valentine’s Day, but I am one for Beverly. I didn’t care what we did as long as I was with her. But I do miss my other girl. Ava is back at the Larks’, likely watching movies with Nana and eating too many candy hearts and wrapped chocolates. She probably doesn’t even notice I’m gone. That thought makes my stomach hurt, but Beverly’s gasp pulls me back.

“Look at all this!” she says in awe.

I turn onto an aisle with rows and rows of fabric. Her hands are in the air as she dramatically says, “Griffin. I don’t think you understand: The world is our oyster here.”

My lips kick up into a smile.

“And what oystery puppet are we making?” I ask.

She traces black fabric between her fingers. “I’m thinking about pitching a new bird.”

“A new bird? But the five core birds work fine.”

“They do, but there’s something else I have in mind. I want something fresh.”