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Another man might’ve looked away. Reid’s eyes locked on hers like he had NASA controlling their trajectory. “I guess our thing is done with then.”
This had been a very un-thing-like day. Both of them on edge and irritated. But he intrigued her and she still wanted his lips, his arms, his dining table.
“I think we have a few lessons left. And there’s that promise you made me.”
His eyes flicked toward the dining room.
“It needs flowers or something, that table.”
“You are all the decoration it needs.”
Excellent idea. She walked into his space. He shifted his knees to let her stand between them. “I fucked up with you, Zarley. I don’t wan
t that.”
“I still like what I see.”
“You have no idea how good that makes me feel.”
“But you expect too much from me. The sex is one thing, but,” she finished on a frustrated exhale. The sex was a lot of things and the man was something entirely foreign to her and all the more interesting for it.
“I need a friend. You said we could be friends and lovers. That’s what I want from you for however long this thing lasts.”
Friends, lovers. A man who knew his own faults and wanted to change. It was still just a thing.
She could do that.
SEVENTEEN
Reid needed a drink. He hadn’t wanted one since he’d promised Zarley he’d quit Lucky’s. He’d given it up cold turkey and not felt a craving since. Now he craved with a deep ache in his belly and a tightness in his throat he couldn’t relax.
Because things had gotten emotional and there was no way he could walk this time. This was his shit, and a woman he trusted to call him on it.
But he simply couldn’t see what was in it for her.
It was his road to walk.
She stood between his legs while he sat on a kitchen stool, her hands on his shoulders. He’d almost chased her off and now he was scared to touch her in case it was too soon, in case he came off as so desperate she thought he was pathetic. What man of his age was still a virgin? How did he get off telling her she was C-grade?
She tipped her chin up to eyeball him. “I can be your friend, but you have friends who know you better. I wish someone filled my fridge with homemade food.”
“Dev and Sarina. Owen, who you met that night at Lucky’s. Yes, they’re my friends. The people I grew up with. But they’re also my partners and they got rich from working with me, so it’s different. Yes, they call me on my shit, but they’ve also relied on me for ten years to be right, to have the answers.” They walked with him but it was still his road to walk alone. “And I always did, so they learned to let me win.”
She put her hand to his neck. “That’s a lot to unpack.”
“What do I need to do to make being my friend right for you?”
She took her hands away, folded them over her chest. “That’s not how friendship works. It’s not a transaction.”
Wasn’t it? If there wasn’t Plus between them would he have had Owen and Sarina in his life for a decade? How long would Dev want to cook for him now that there was no basis for their relationship? And with the contractual ban, with the fact they’d sided with Kuch on ousting him, didn’t that shoot the unicorns and rainbows version of friendship in the foot?
She put a hand absently on his thigh. “You were the weird, loner kid, weren’t you?”
He was the weird, quiet, too big-too-soon kid whose mother was Mighty Mouse, tiny and solitary and ferocious where it came to his needs, but struggling in a small town where being a single mom still had a stigma attached to it. He was the church fundraiser kid, with unpopular obsessions, strange enthusiasms and charity bin clothing, but a brain that didn’t quit, didn’t let anyone forget he was different, destined to do something bigger than the town on a road to somewhere. He remembered the hours his mom worked in the diner. The hours he spent alone. He didn’t have it bad. They weren’t unhappy memories.
All he could do was nod.
She put her hands on his chest, traced his tattoo, and leaned in. “I always liked the quiet, weird, loner ones.”
