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Unfortunately, that was the demon shadow of her grief talking and she needed to remember that. Anyone would be moved by the way Tom cared for her. He’d made time to ease her loneliness, gave her space to break down, took her to bed and made the kind of love to her she hadn’t known existed.
She’d wanted to forget, to be reminded that the pain of Drew dying would be a part of her but not a constant. Tom had done something more than reroute her sorrow-stuck thoughts. He’d unearthed her and sent her floating and then brought her home safely, somehow stronger for having been pulled apart.
Again, the gremlin grief doing her thinking.
She needed to be smart and not read too much into that one intense encounter last night that began with tears and ended with the semblance of love. It was consolation, like all the meals Tom cooked and all the nights he’d slept beside her, but pushed to the extreme and bent into a shape that’d pleased them both, made Flick feel easier in her skin and Tom comfortable enough not to hide his apprehension.
From Flick’s point of view, this was easily solved. “I’ll move out for a few days when he gets here. I can couch surf or stay in a hotel. It’s no big deal. It’s a few nights.”
Tom paced between the refrigerator and the counter. “You’re not moving out.”
“It’s only fair.”
He opened the fridge and stared into it. “You live here.” He came back and slapped a packet of diced beef on the counter. “He’s passing through to do a surprise inspection.”
She didn’t know what to make of that. By all objective standards, Tom was a success. What could his father possibly find fault with? Unless it was his choice of roommate. “It shouldn’t be awkward between you and your dad because of me. And he needs a bed. I’ll move out.”
“Shit, Flick.” Tom banged a pan on the stove top. “That’s not the issue. He can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the sectional.”
“I’m over here on a stool at the counter in the good old USA and you’re way out on a space station where time has a different meaning and the oxygen is thin.”
He stopped fussing with the stove and looked over his shoulder at her with an exasperated expression. She made him frown harder when she said, “You’re also speaking in an alien language I can’t understand. He’s your dad. What’s the big deal here?”
“He will get in your face and grill you.” Tom came to the counter and put his hand down over hers. “He will judge and pick and deliberately try to upset you. It’s what he does.”
“I’m reading your signal.”
“You do not have to put up with that. Especially now. I told him I didn’t want him here, but the last time he listened to a request from me was when I was seventeen and asked to borrow the car.”
“He didn’t let you take it?”
“He made me repeat myself, and then he laughed so hard, in front of my terrified date; she dumped me before we got out the front door, and it wasn’t because we had to walk.”
“Sick burn.”
He blinked, then laughed at himself. “We’re never more than five thought tangents away from being that kid who got slapped down by a parent, no matter how old we get.” He groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Or is that just me?”
He was too delicious not to mess with. “It’s just you.”
He scrubbed his face and made a growly sound. “You’re not hungry, I see.”
“You’ve met me, you’ve bedded me. You know I’m hungry. You also know I’m stubborn, but in this instance, I’m also confused. The easiest thing here is that I move out, temporarily, but that’s not what you want. Also, that pan is smoking.”
He swore and took the pan off the heat. “You’ve had a bad week. I don’t want you to have to think about this, but I needed to warn you he might make things uncomfortable.”
“You don’t have to tell him anything about us. I’m just the temporary roommate.” Unless she stayed, and then what would she and Tom become? If there was no grief gremlin, if there was no feeling of obligation on his side. She liked him too much not to want to speculate about a future where they weren’t temporary.
“He knows we’re roommates. I want to move you into my bed and punch his lights out if he so much as raises an eyebrow in judgment at you.”
“Oh.” Well then. That.
“But that’s not fair to you and it’s not like you’d ordinarily need me to go all white-knight for you, but his timing fucking sucks.”
“What if we do a radical thing?” That got him to quirk his head and close one eye. “We let me decide what to do?”
He put his back to her and banged the pan on the stove again, this time deliberately, which made her laugh. He wasn’t angry, he was frustrated and had a bad case of parent blindness. Flick knew it well. She’d never introduced a date to her pa
rents because the memory of how they’d reacted to Drew—as if he was a deviant and deserved the problem that was their rebel daughter—didn’t leave room to imagine a better outcome.
