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Her crestfallen face doesn’t appreciate my humor.
“Come in.” I step aside.
“I really need to find another employee.” She slips out of her Birks and carries the bag to the kitchen.
I flip on the light over the sink. “Are you firing me?”
“No. I need someone to work so I can check onyoubefore your bedtime.”
“Scottie,” I scratch my head, “I don’t want you checking in on me.”
“Someone needs to.” She pulls smaller bags and bottles of supplements out of her big bag.
“Why?”
“Because you live alone.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I live alone for a reason?”
She looks up at me. “You don’t want me here.” Her lips twist. “That’s rude.”
“No. That’s not it. I want you here. I want you here in ways you can’t understand. But I don’t want to be your pet project, patient, or burden.” I shake my head. “A job. A distraction.”
“You’re not.”
“Can we just go back to you knowing about my cancer but not telling me that you know, and I’ll pretend that you don’t know even though I know you know? Ya know?”
That line forms at the bridge of her nose, but it falls victim to her giggles.
I don’t care what she has in that bag; it can’t begin to heal me like the beautiful sound coming from her right now.
“Price. It’s not a coincidence that you came into Drummond’s when you did. It was fate. You needed me.”
More than you know.
But it wasn’t fate.
“And I have to believe that I need to do this, not only for you but also for me. I need something to keep me from losing myself in Koen.”
“Losing yourself?” I fill my water glass.
“He asked me to move in with him. And I didn’t think. I just said yes.”
“If his house is bigger than your trailer, I can see how you might get lost.”
“Har har.”
I pull out a chair, straddling it backward, and inspect the contents of the bags. “What do you mean by getting lost?”
She sits next to me. “The way I got lost in you.”
Glancing up from the bottle of nattokinase, I narrow my eyes. “You felt lost in me?”
She nods. “I spent entirely too much time thinking about you when we weren’t together. And when we were together, I resented the passing of time.”
I try not to react, but it’s a terrible feeling to think of how oblivious I was to her emotional state. “I was a terrible boyfriend. And don’t try to convince me otherwise. Just let me own this.”
“Youwerethe worst.”
