In his whole life, he’d only formed two deep attachments—with his mother and the Colemans. Loyalty to Ben ran in his blood.
It was difficult to think about acting contrary to that.
It was also difficult to think about how to protect his heart from Leah if she agreed to go out with him.
It hadn’t been difficult to avoid giving women the power to hurt him in the past. But he already felt uncomfortably far gone over Leah, and they weren’t even a couple.
Warnings were stirring inside him. He heard them. Yet they were pitted against his attraction to Leah, and Leah was winning.
She’d told him point-blank that she was not looking for romance. If she did agree to go out with him, she’d want to keep things light. Right? Yes. Which was reassuring. It meant she wouldn’t demand vulnerability from him.
What should he do?
Should he really move forward with this?
He wrote a text to both Ben and CeCe.
Are you sure you’re okay with the idea of me and Leah?
CeCe answered almost immediately.
As sure as God made little green apples.
Then from Ben:
As sure as death and taxes.
Sebastian picked up his phone and selected Leah’s contact. Filling his lungs, he remembered how she’d looked at the football gamein her jersey. Her pale hair. Her long eyelashes and straightforward gaze. She was quirky, self-reliant, sacrificial. Her personality entertained him. Talking to her challenged him. He often dialed-in conversations with people. But he’d never be able to dial in a conversation with Leah Montgomery. Keeping up with her demanded his full attention.
He connected a call to her, then went to stand at his window in his wrinkled scrubs. Outside, the lights of Atlanta sparkled against a black backdrop of sky. He concentrated on a distant window glowing with yellow light as if, should he try hard enough, he’d be able to see her there.
Leah’s brows glided upward when she saw the identity of the incoming caller. Sebastian was calling her?Sebastian?“Hello?” She sounded woefully breathless.
“Leah, it’s Sebastian. How are you?”
“Very well, thanks. And you?”
“Doing well.”
The deep voice she’d heard a few nights ago in a dream curled around her like a warm silk blanket. “Still wearing the Susan B. Anthony T-shirt?” she asked.
“No. It was so tight I had to use a vacuum attachment to suck it off me when I got home.”
“The idea that ‘we, the people doesn’t mean we, the white male citizens’ has never been a comfortable one for men to wear.”
He laughed. “True.”
“I happen to love my T-shirt. I’m wearing it while grading papers at this very moment, in fact. Eminently comfortable.”
A pause of quiet. Why had he called?
“I wondered if you’d be interested in having dinner with me,” he said.
Her shocked mind took a ride on a Tilt-A-Whirl. “For what purpose?”
“For the purpose of enjoyment.”
What did that mean? She didn’t want to misunderstand. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
