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My mouth opened, but no words came.
Oh, shit. I hadn’t even thought of labels and crap like that. “Uhhh...” I said, not sure how to answer.
Wrong fucking thing to say.
Caroline stuffed her phone into her bag. Zipping it shut, she surged to her feet. “You know that thing I just said about you being sweet? I take it all back.”
If I didn’t stop her, she was going to stomp off, and that would be the end of any more midnight visits for me.
“Wait.” I popped to my feet after her. “Jesus, I haven’t even thought about this shit. I’ve just been so busy enjoying what we have, I haven’t exactly stopped to pin a label on it.”
She paused, her eyes intent as she studied me. “Do labels scare you?”
Hell, yes!
I snorted. “Hell, no. I just...” I tossed out a hand. “I haven’t had a true, honest girlfriend in over four years. I...I’m rusty at, you know, monogamy and commitment and shit.”
She folded her arms over her chest and continued to stare with that stare of hers, the one that told me I was in deep monkey squirts.
I fidgeted under her inspection. After shifting my weight from one leg to the other, I glanced around the busy quad. “Should we really be discussing this so openly...around so many ears?”
Shaking her head sadly, she snorted out her disgust and started to stride away.
I was right on her heels. “I’m sorry, okay. Please, Caroline. You know I’m an ass.”
She smiled lightly. “And yet, shame on me, I keep putting up with it.”
“There’s no one else but you. You know that. I don’t know what I was thinking saying all that fake bullshit. I’ve been single so long it’s hard to remember I’m really, honestly in a relationship now. And besides, since we have to keep it under wraps and I have to act like I’m single around certain people, I didn’t know if the usual rules applied, anyway.”
She slowed to a stop before turning around, her eyes filled with torment. “Does the secrecy thing negate any chance of this being a normal relationship?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, worried as hell I was going to say the wrong thing, again. “You tell me.”
“No, obviously, you have your own ideas of what we aren’t. So now I need some clarification. Are we just friends with benefits, or are we actually a couple? Have you not been with any other girls because you just haven’t had the opportunity, or because you’re actually being faithful to me? Because I need to know before I start thinking things.”
Thinking things? That didn’t sound good.
“What kind of things?”
“I don’t know, Oren. Things! A future, love, marriage, forever. Just things!”
“Oh.” Okay, that answer left me speechless and a little breathless. But shit, had she really been thinking about those things? With me? I’d been over here just living for each day. After our nonverbal agreement to stick together when she’d asked about birth control, I hadn’t thought any further than the next time I’d get to see her and how to keep it low key.
“I take that to mean you haven’t been thinking any such things.” Her voice was dry and unimpressed.
She tried to turn away again, but I caught her arm and moved closer. “Damn it, Care. Just because I haven’t been thinking that far ahead doesn’t mean I’m scared of those things. I’m just...”
When I realized I didn’t know what I was, she lifted an eyebrow and guessed, “Scared of those things?”
“No!” I clenched my teeth. “Christ, woman. Maybe I’m not even letting myself think that far ahead because I’m just waiting for that inevitable day when you realize you can do so much better and drop me flat. I’m not scared of those things. I’m scared of wanting them and then not getting them, so I don’t even allow myself to think about them.”
She stepped closer, her blue eyes suddenly full of sympathy. “Why do you think I’m going to leave you?”
I threw my hands in the air. “Probably because I’m me, the asshole. Why else? Do I need another reason?”
“Oh, Oren. You stupid, stupid man. Don’t you realize how addicted I am to you?”
I shook my head and laughed nervously. “People break free of nasty addictions every day.”
