I tightened my hold on her wrists. Not painfully so, but like she was my anchor. Because, yes, in such a short amount of time, she had become just that.
“I love the hell out of you,” I told her. “I want to wake up to you every morning, go to bed with you every night. I want to reach over in the middle of the night and pull you close to me just because I can. It’s your coffee I want to come down to the kitchen when I wake up. You’re the woman I want to argue with about whether the toilet paper roll goes up or down.”
She grunted. “It’s up,” she insisted. “For the life of me, I don’t know why it’s such a hard concept for you.” She sighed, sounding exasperated.
A chuckle slipped from my lips because I love fucking with her about it. “See? As much time as you spend at my house or I at yours, we practically live together already.”
Her lips parted to give a rebuttal, but she stopped. Obviously, there wasn’t a comeback because she knew I was right.
“You haven’t even met my parents yet.”
With a lift and fall of my shoulders, I brushed the concern away. “I’ll meet them. Do you want me to give them a call right now?” I released one of her wrists to retrieve my cell out of my pocket.
“Don’t you dare.” She paused and gave me a look. “How do you even have their number?”
I swallowed. Would it behoove me to tell her I could easily access the phone numbers of everyone close to her, including her parents, her best friend, and her sister? Hell, I also had her brother-in-law’s cell and knew the office where he worked.
But no.
I kept that information close to my chest.
“You probably gave it to me at some point,” I said. “We’ll have dinner with them the week after your shop opens. They’ll love me. All parents love me.”
The space between her eyebrows narrowed. “The parents of your past girlfriends loved you?”
A bark of laughter burst through my mouth. “Hell no. Only because I haven’t had any past girlfriends,” I confessed with a shrug. “Not in the last decade or more.” Girlfriend implied a relationship, and I wasn’t one for those in the past few years. But with Mia things changed.
Besides …
“And you’re not mygirlfriend,” I said the last word like it singed the back of my throat to say it because it did. “You’re my fucking woman. My everything. I love you more than I thought was possible. I want you to be …” I paused to keep from expressing my actual thoughts.
Mia was meant to be more than just agirlfriend.Like we were in fucking high school.
“I want you to live with me. Us. Together.” That was the only acceptable outcome of this conversation.
She gave me a contemplative look. I could see the wheels turning in her mind. “I want the bigger closet.”
I grunted but said, “Done.” It’d hurt a little to relocate my suits to the second closet in my bedroom.
“And the left side of the bed,” she insisted.
I shook my head before she finished. “No.” There was no bend or give in my voice.
“Why not?” She pulled her wrists from my hands.
“The left side is my side because it’s the closest to the door.”
“So?”
“If there’s an intruder—highly unlikely because of my security system—but on the off chance that something like that happened, me sleeping on the left side puts me in between them and you.”
Her face softened. “Oh.” Her voice sounded slightly breathless. “In that case …” Her eyes dropped to her hands. “I’ll move in with you.” Mia’s eyes locked with mine. “After the grand opening of Cup of Joy.”
That was only a few weeks away. Too many days for my impatient ass, but I would make do.
“And you have to meet my parents soon. My dad can be intimidating,” she warned.
I cupped her face. “So can I.” I took her bottom lip in between my teeth before slowly pulling away.
