Page 17 of Worshipped by the BRATVA Grump

“Dinner?”

She glares at me. “You know what I mean.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Her mouth opens, then closes. When she speaks again, there’s no joke in her expression. “I want to be with you.”

There are very few things anyone can say that leave me without an immediate response. Daisy manages it regularly. I lean back against the booth.

I think about it. “I want to be with you too.”

Her face softens.

“And I will try not to propose again before dessert.”

She laughs so hard she has to put her napkin over her mouth. I sit there watching her and feel something inside me settle.

I don’t need her answer tonight. I already know mine.

Daisy has spent the last weeks fixing up a shop she’s wanted for years because she needs to know she can make something that belongs to her. I understand that part. What I’m struggling with is the part where I stand beside her and don’t immediately remove every obstacle from her path. I’ve spent my whole life solving problems. You find the weak point, remove it, move forward. Daisy doesn’t want that. She wants to know she can move the thing herself.

So I can wait. I can stand beside her while she does it. And when she turns around, I’ll still be there.

We leave just after ten. The cold catches her the second we step outside and she presses herself against my side while I unlock the car. I put my arm around her and ask her to come home with me. She looks up and there’s hesitation, but it doesn’t last long.

“Okay.”

I kiss the top of her head.

On the drive back she talks about opening stock and whether she’s ordered too much romance because apparently there is such a thing as too much romance, which sounds objectively false. By the time we reach my apartment she’s yawning between sentences.

She kicks her boots off inside the door. Her coat lands over the back of a chair. Her bag goes on my table.

I look at it.

Black canvas. Two camera lenses in the side pocket. A notebook sticking out of the top.

Daisy catches me staring. “What?”

“Nothing.”

She comes closer. “Liar.”

I put my hands on her waist. “You put your bag on my table.”

“I can move it if you have a preferred place.”

I kiss her forehead. “Leave it there.”

Her eyes search mine before she smiles and reaches for my hand. “I need to brush my teeth.”

“There’s a spare toothbrush in the bathroom.”

I hear the bathroom door close a moment later, followed by the sound of running water. I stand in the kitchen looking at Daisy’s bag on my table and think about how natural it looks there.

Then I open the drawer beneath the counter where I keep spare keys.

I take one out and hold it in my palm.