Of course, we couldn’t stay at the top of the playground making out all night. Even though I really wanted to. But this was afamilyshelter. We needed to keep our interactions family friendly. Also, we really needed to talk about this change in our relationship status before we got too carried away. Because even if this felt extremely right, I wanted to make sure we were on the same page. We had to agree on what we wanted from each other.
Daniel was leaning on the railing around the little platform, and I was sitting next to him. His good hand was tracing patterns on my jeans. “What happens now?” I asked.
“What do you want to happen?”
“I don’t know.” I turned to face him. “I want to do this ... be with you. But I don’t know what to tell people.”
He grinned. “Telling people is the easiest part. Did you forget that everyone thinks we’re already dating?”
“I know, I know, but we’ve beenlying.” I looked down. I didn’t know how to explain this to him. I took a breath. “We werepretendingto date. Which didn’t scare me at all because it’s just, you know. Pretend. But this. This is different.”
“And you’re scared now?”
“I trust you.” I bit my lip. “But Ijustgot out of a long relationship. It was a messy end—I’m realizing that I kind of lost myself in that relationship. And that’s why the breakup completely wrecked me.”
“Do you think you’re rebounding?”
Good question. It certainly didn’t feel like I was. Devin was not even a blip on my radar anymore.
“No. I think I’m ready to move on. But I’m kind of scared to jump into something serious. Especially since everyone thinks we’ve been ...”
“We’ve been going at it for a month,” he said.
I nodded.
“C’mon. Put your head here.” He guided me to sit between his legs with my head on his chest. He loosely encircled my waist with his arms. It was the most amazing feeling in the world to be completely surrounded by Daniel. And ... it was strangely easier to talk about this while not looking at his face.
“Are you afraid of getting dumped again?” He smelled like the forest, and a little bit like pie.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just ... we can’t exactly take it slow at this point.”
He chuckled. “That train left the station a long time ago.”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
“Why don’t we just stick with our original deal, then,” he said. “The dance is in a week. We don’t commit now to anything beyond that. No pressure. We agreed on two dates plus the dance, and eight pictures. We fulfill what’s left—that’s one dance and three pictures. Then, we see how we feel. Decide what we want to come next. Deal?”
One more date didn’t sound scary. I wouldn’t be committing to anything more than what I had already committed to. I could do that.
“Okay. We keep all the parameters except for the first one, that the relationship will be fake dating only, and then we reassess when we’re done.”
“Exactly.” He tightened his arms around me more. I was pretty sure there was no way in hell I would walk away from this next week, but it felt better to know I could if I needed to. But right now I wanted to stay like this forever.
“Can we change one parameter, though?” I asked.
“I hope you’re going to say the physical-contact one.”
I laughed. “Yup.”
He leaned down and kissed the side of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine.
“Um, Daniel?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“Please don’t think you have to, but are you comfortable telling me ... how ...?”
“How we ended up living here?”
