He grinned at her around his mouthful, and as they went back and forth, I was struck by how affectionate they were, how much warmth there was between them. Deacon had grown up in a home so full of love, it was... something special.
Something I could only envy.
Deacon laughed at them, and then his mom turned to us. “Dinner will be ten minutes.”
Deacon took the sleeve of my sweater at my wrist and pulled me out of the room, down a hall, and through a door. He closed it behind us, and we both stood there. He was grinning, and damn, he was handsome.
He still had a hold of my sleeve, right at the wrist. Not touching me, exactly, but he was touching a part of me. My sweater, and by extension, me.
I looked at his hand, then up at his face, and smiled at him.
His eyes met mine, and he dropped his hand. “Sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. I like it.”
In fact, I’d loved it.
It was somehow better, sweeter, than if he’d taken my hand.
“You can take my sleeve anytime.”
He blushed deep pink and took a step back, his eyes cast down to the floor. He blinked a few times. “This is my room.”
His room was large, as far as bedrooms went. There was a bed in the corner with a bedside table. His bed covers were a dark blue, his bed impeccably made. There was a rugon the floor, a desk in the other corner with a model of a plane on it, and a large bookcase by the door.
Of course I was drawn to it.
I scanned the shelves, reading all the titles. He had an eclectic selection, ranging fromThe Lord of the Ringsto manga, some non-fiction animal veterinary journals, and Japanese poetry, of course. “Great books,” I said. “We have a lot of the same titles. Your shelves look very similar to mine.”
He was standing close, still not touching, but perhaps closer than was strictly necessary. “You have subscriptions to theJournal of Animal ScienceandVeterinary and Animal Science?”
I chuckled. “Except those.”
Then I noticed the long, narrow wooden tray on the second top shelf. Well, more to the point, what was in the tray. There was a small anime figurine, an old plane ticket stub, a bottle cap, a small rock, among other random things, but one thing in particular caught my eye.
It was the slip of paper I’d written his name on when I’d put that book aside for him on the store’s opening day.
I reached up, almost touching it, but stopped just short. I didn’t think he’d like anyone touching his things. “That looks familiar.”
He smiled, his cheeks pink. “Yes.”
“You kept it.”
“Yes.” He kept his eyes on the tray, at all his little treasures. “I like to keep things that mean a lot to me.”
Oh my.
“My little note means a lot to you?”
He nodded, blushing a deeper, beautiful pink. “Yes. Because it came from you. Because you wrote it, but also because you were considerate enough to put the book aside for me.”
Oh my heart. It could have just about burst.
“I love that you kept it,” I said. I looked at the other things in the tray. “Will you tell me what the other things are? What they mean to you?”
He smiled in a way I hadn’t really seen before. Excitement, determination, and animation. He pointed as he went. “Yuri figurine. My dormmate at college gave it to me. She was in the room next to mine, and she told me to watchYuri on Ice. I hadn’t heard of it and, well, it was very new to me.”
I chuckled. “I can see why you liked it.”
