My hand reached out, weaving my fingers through his hair, and he leaned into my touch. “What else?”
“How do you feel about covering Matt’s projects while he’s away?”
“That’s mostly structural?” Patrick nodded. “Hm. I may need to dig out a few textbooks, but yeah. Sure.”
“I’m not worried about it. The fact that you know which textbooks to dig out proves you can handle it.”
“That’s three.”
Patrick groaned, and turned his face to press a kiss in the center of my palm. “I’m going up to Ithaca next week. Fundraising photo op, basically. Thursday into Friday.”
“There’s no reason to be grumpy about that, Patrick. There’s nothing better than Cornell in May. I’d love to go back for a few days.”
His eyes brightened. “Come with me.”
My thoughts darted to Charlotte and some of the prevailing campus gossip. “I’m supervising demo on those rickety little windows in the attic at Wellesley next Thursday, and considering how it went with the windows in the sunroom, I’m expecting problems.”
“Then I’m sticking with grumpy.”
My hand moved to his neck, and I waited for the next item on his list. His wry humor was gone, and in its place, cords of tension tightened beneath my fingers.
“Shannon knows. We had this huge argument today. She called me on a lot of superbly accurate shit, and…I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, she had no idea, and she’ll take it to the grave.”
I waited for the wave of panic, but it never crashed. “Lauren knows.”
“Lauren, what—what?” Patrick’s eyes burned with uncertainty when he gripped my wrist, stilling my fingers. “Since…how?”
I gulped loudly and concentrated on the thin, jagged scar on my right knee earned from a rusty nail on a jobsite three years ago. Focusing on the fine white line was easier than analyzing the frustration in Patrick’s voice. “Since she figured it out a couple of months ago. She’s very perceptive.”
“So Matt knows?”
Shrugging, I met Patrick’s eyes. “She hasn’t told him, no.”
“So we’re going to all this trouble to keep Matt and Sam in the dark? Two people who adore you and would give approximately zero fucks about what we do?”
“That’s one very linear way of thinking about it.”
Patrick released my wrist and his hands fell to his lap. His narrowed eyes scanned the neighboring rooftops for several minutes before he spoke again.
“I want this. You. Us. I want the language that your eyes speak and all of your quirks, even if they drive me fucking crazy. I want you to live here with me, I want you working next to me, and I want everyone to know. I want us to be like we are now, but…I don’t want any more secrets.”
I stared at him in the bright city darkness, blinking while his words caught fire in my belly. “I want that, too.”
A dazzling, childlike smile filled Patrick’s face, and he laced our fingers together. “Good. Now if you don’t mind, I’m taking your sweet ass to bed because you need to stop thinking and have some rough sex. Let me just get those paper clips out of your hair first.”
*
“Oh, Andy,” Laurenwhispered, tucking the card into the envelope. She stood, stretching out her arms in my direction, and I squeezed her shoulders. “Thank you. This is perfect.”
“Tell me, tell me!” Shannon demanded, her neck craning to see between us.
“It is a book all about the Swiss Lakes District,” she replied, brushing tears from the corners of her eyes. “For the honeymoon. And she included ideas for boat tours and hikes, and restaurants and everything, it’s wonderful. I can’t wait, and Matthew is going to love it.”
Returning to my seat, I adjusted the waist on my navy blue skirt and fiddled with my hot pink bib necklace—I couldn’t get away without some brightness at a bridal shower—while Shannon gazed at me with a fond smile. It was her new thing, and I smiled in response before turning my attention to Lauren’s next gift.
Shannon created reasons to swing by Patrick’s office or casually chat while I refilled my water bottle in the kitchen. Her pretenses were always sensible: she was thinking about placing a furniture order for the new offices, and wanted my thoughts, or she heard about a new farmers’ market by Northeastern University for my Saturday ritual. Implicit in all of it was her closely guarded approval mixed with a fierce warning that she was keeping an eye on me.
I begged Patrick for two more weeks of semi-secrecy but I was more than ready to drop the act with Shannon. I didn’t dare tell him that. I wasn’t about to see him bust a capillary over my shifting feelings. Two more weeks brought us up to the day Riley and I swapped places so I could get up to speed on Matt’s projects and engineering processes. It seemed like a clean transition point, and while I wasn’t looking forward to relocating to the second floor, I was ready to go public.
