I looked away. “So, how was your afternoon?”
“Oh, thrilling. Gideon is a fucking stallion. He let me wear his fire hat while we fucked.”
I rolled my eyes, even as the words conjured an image that made me want to throttle something.
Parker braced one hand on his hip and looked at me steadily. “What the hell was that little display, Jameson?”
I sat up, setting my feet on the floor, and braced my forearms on my knees. “Me. Being an idiot. Surely not the first time you’ve seen it.”
“Hmm. Heads up.”
He threw a white wax paper bag at my head and I snagged it out of the air before it impacted.
“Still have those baseball reflexes, huh?” He came forward and sat cross-legged on the drop cloth so his knees were close to mine. He nodded at the bag. “It’s a cupcake. For you.”
I opened the bag. It was, indeed, a chocolate cupcake, the frosting slightly smashed thanks to its brief stint as a missile.
“German chocolate,” Parker said sweetly. “Because you hate it, but you’ll feel guilty enough to eat it anyway.”
My stomach fluttered at his words, not because he was wrong but because he was so damn right… and he knew me so well. Better than anyone.
And I wasright thereon the edge of falling for him again. And when he left me this time, I didn’t know how I was gonna let him go.
I peeled the paper off the cupcake and took a large bite. “Gah. Coconut.”
“Yep. Enjoy every last strangely-textured morsel,” he said. His thumb and forefinger tapped out a little rhythm on his knee. “You wanna talk about what happened earlier?”
His tone said he definitely wanted to discuss it, but I shook my head slowly. Did I wanna talk about me being a jealous idiot? About how, when I’d seen him talking and laughing with Gideon, it had hit me like a sucker punch that sometime soon—next month or next summer or next year, it didn’t matter when—he’d be gone, and all his jokes and his laughter and his smiles and his kisses would be someone else’s? No, I didnotwant to fucking discuss it.
I didn’t even wanna think about it.
But the door to the vault where I kept my thoughts of Parker was swinging wide open now, and suddenly, everything I didn’t wanna think about wasright fucking there.
The truth of the matter was, I wanted Parker Hoffstraeder right now more than I had ever wanted anything or anyone. More than I’d wanted a baseball scholarship. More than I’d wanted to save my dad. More than I wanted a drink—hell, I hadn’t even thought about it since he’d been here. More than I wanted to fix my house. More, even, than I’d wanted Parker himself, back in the day.
I’d been without him for years now, wandering around in the darkness and wondering why I couldn’t make connections the way other people did, and then, the second I’d let Parker back into my life, it was like someone had flipped on a light.
Now I realized that falling in love was the easiest thing in the universe… as long as I was falling in love with Parker.
Parker, who was gonna be leaving again.
Thiswas what I’d been trying to insulate myself against for the past year… hell, for the past eleven years and six months, if I was being honest. I didn’t know how to have Parker in my life halfway. I didn’t know how to set limits and use restraint. I wanted him always, infinitely. I always had. I didn’t know how to be polite strangers, or polite friends, or politeanything. The way I felt about Parker was not polite.
But looking at him now, in the half-shadowed light, I couldn’t regret anything that had happened over the past weeks. Not one single second. Parker had shown me just how stuck I’d been—in my job, in my house, in my head. He’d changed me for the better.
Again.
And I didn’t want to waste a minute of whatever time we had left.
“You know the first time I realized I wanted you?” I said.
Parker’s gaze lifted to mine, his attention rapt. He shook his head.
“It was the day I hurt my arm. You remember? Coach dropped me off at the hospital after the game…”
Parker sighed angrily. “Oh, I remember alright. I remember your mom was out of town for work, and Molly was out, and your dad was wasted—”
“Probably more like mildly drunk,” I corrected. “The trulywasteddays happened after Molly died.”
