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“You should go, Andrew,” I repeated.
“Susie—”
“You are not going to wear me down with your self-entitled bullshit. I should not have to buy your supposed brotherly love. Now leave.”
Andrew ground his teeth together, then stomped down the steps and over to the shiny new sedan parked across the street. Odds were he and his business would be just fine. Mom or Dad would give him the rest of the money. There was a solid history of them bailing the golden boy out of all sorts of trouble. The same kind of situations that earned me a lecture and an admonition to do better. Groan.
That was why Andrew never learned to do for himself. Was I jealous he got more love than I did? Maybe I used to be. But not anymore. With a rev of the engine he tore off down the street. Odd how my sibling had lost the ability to upset me. Guess you had to be emotionally invested in someone for that to happen. We’d never been close. Now I knew we never would be. Not after that scene at Aunt Susan’s funeral. Sure as hell, not after tonight.
“There goeth the mediocre white man,” I said in a dry tone.
Lars grunted.
“Thanks for having my back.”
“Anytime,” he said gently. It kind of killed me when he used that tone of voice. Like I was precious.
“Look at us, consciously coupling,” I joked. At least, it was sort of a joke.
He cocked his head. “Are we seriously a couple?”
“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You tell me.”
“Well, you’ve admitted to having feelings for me.”
“I even accept that there’s some sort of romantic relationship between you and me. Just in case all of the first-date icebreaker questions didn’t give it away.”
“That’s a big step,” he said, voice thoughtful. “You were pretty adamant about not wanting to date.”
“My refusal really stung you, huh?”
“Yeah. It did,” he said, with all due seriousness. “But I guess you trust me now. At least a little. Despite my taste in friends and the mystery divorce certificate.”
My mouth opened and nothing came out. Awkward as heck. Our issues did give me cause for concern. That much was true.
Kat appeared, winding herself around Lars’s ankles. When he picked her up, she happily flopped boneless over his shoulder baby style. Long firm strokes down her back soon had her purring loudly.
Lars’s return smile was wry. “It’s okay, Susie. You don’t have to say it.”
“I do trust you.” The words hardly stuck in my throat at all. “But, Lars, what exactly do you want from me here? I guess that’s the question I was ever so slowly working my way toward with all of the icebreaker nonsense.”
The smile faded and his expression turned somber. “You’re ready to get serious and talk this out?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said in a soft voice. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I mean, do you still want to just date?” My shoulders were approximately up around my ears. “Because you’ve got your business happening and that’s great. But is there room for me in your life or are we...? I don’t know. I feel like I don’t fit into your plan.”
The man set the cat down gently, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Fuck the plan.”
Wow.
“You need me to repeat that?”
“Ah, no. Heard you loud and clear.”
“Good. We’re together, right?” he asked. “It feels like we’re together. I’m staying with you for a few more days, at least.”
“Right.” I looked away. “Or you could stay longer.”
A gentle hand to my chin directed my gaze back to his face. “You want me to stay longer?”
“If you want to.”
“How much longer?”
“Um.”
He said nothing, but his fingers stayed put. Warm and firm and just there for me. Like I wanted him to be. Like all of the others hadn’t been.
“We could make it an ongoing-for-the-foreseeable-future kind of thing. Or not if that’s moving too fast.” My heart would be bruised black and blue from all of the crashing it was doing against my ribs. “I know you’ve never lived with a girlfriend before and when you think about it, we haven’t actually been together for long, but—”
“Yes,” he said with nil hesitation. “I want to live with you.”
The way my mind started scrambling. Ugh. “Right. Okay. I mean, it is convenient, staying with me. The house is just down the—”
The emotion in his eyes was pure thunder. “Don’t.”
“Don’t?”
The fingers on my chin tightened ever so slightly. “You’re right. I’m new to this. The relationships I’ve been in... I don’t normally let them get this far. But can we agree that if I’m living with you, it’s because I want to be with you. Because we’re together. Not because it’s convenient or some other bullshit excuse, okay?”
“O-okay.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
A car parked down the street and a television boomed from the house opposite us before being silenced. Otherwise the night was peaceful. The suburbs were at rest.
