“Hey, sunshine. Good day?” I ask, trying to keep my cool.
“Yeah. Very,” she mumbles, looking over my shoulder. “That smells good.” she says unenthusiastically, and she presses her lips together and swallows.Hmm.She usually loves my cooking.
“You okay?” I ask, looking at her more closely. She looks a little pale. Maybe even a little green around the edges. I study the skillet. It looks fine. I’ve made this for her before, and she loved it.
“Yeah.” She shakes her head, moves to the fridge, and serves herself a glass of water. I put the flame on low on the stove and watch her closely. She’s fidgety and can’t seem to stand still. Not that that isn’t usually how she is. The girl is a bubble of energy. But there is something different. I’m just not sure what.
“Work go alright?”
“Yeah.” She nods, leaning against the kitchen counter across from me. She’s sipping at her water slowly. “They have a new ginger tea,” she mentions, and I nod. “Hey, umm, I was wondering if I could get the key for the cabin.” She avoids looking me in the eyes, and anxiety melds into serious trepidation.
“You have a key for here,” I remind her, and she bites her lower lip.
“I mean mine. My place. Across the street,” she clarifies, and I swear it feels like my stomach drops below my feet.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, umm, you kept my set of keys after Eli and Brandon left that day they moved me in,” she reminds me. I don’t take my eyes off her. She wants the keys to her place back. This was all too good to be true. This is where she asked me to help move her back because she isn’t happy.
“Right,” I grunt and turn, reaching into the drawer they’re in. My heart feels like it’s beating in sludge, and my head’s swimming. Did she meet someone else? What did I do?
No matter how much I beat my brain in, I can’t come up with what I did. Life’s been good.
Too good.
Too easy.
Too beautiful.
I should have known something like this was going to happen.
“Thanks,” she mutters when I put them in her hand, but I don’t move away. I’m about a foot away, but it might as well be the Pacific between us. She looks at them and smiles.
“What do you think about renting it out?” she asks and finally looks up at me.
“What?” The sludge my heartrate has been in washes away, and it starts to pick up speed.She’s not ending us?
“I just think it’s a great place and it should be lived in. Someone should. Not me or anything, but my uncle left that place to me for whatever reason. I’m not sure why really? I never met the guy, and he knew where I was my entire life. But…” I try to listen to what she’s saying, but the relief that hits, hits hard as I move in close and finally have my hands on her. Holding her by the hips, I listen as she rambles, and I wonder if that’s what has been on her mind.
But it can’t be.
There is something else. I can sense it. Trusting my gut like I usually do, I pick her up, and she gasps.
“Big guy, what are you?—”
“Shh,” I quiet her as I turn off the stove and walk us to our bedroom. On the way over, I avoid stepping on one of her flip-flops, and a canvas on the wall catches my eye. Something my buddy Brandon painted and she insisted on buying from his gallery to make our placehomier. Her words, not mine.
I step into our room ignoring the way she’s looking at me like a deer caught in headlights and notice other things. Her perfume next to my cologne on top of the vanity. A mustard-yellow throw over a chair I keep in there and that knitted blanket from the first night, full of color, at the end of our bed.
It’s only been four weeks, and she’s more than under my skin. What I feel for her isn’t some fleeting thing, and I know it isn’t for her, either. Whatever she has in her head, we can fix.Together.Because what we have is a bone-deep connection, and fuck if she thinks I’m not going to fight for what we have.
I toss the throw pillows she added, and she complains, but I smirk at her. Yeah. A month, and she’s made this place feel like a home, a real one. But honestly, the place could be down to the studs, and as long as she was next to me, it would feel like home.
“What’s up?”
“What? What do you mean?” she asks the moment we’re settled on our bed, her body over mine, straddling me. I love how she fits this way. The closeness and her warmth seeping into my skin. But I can fell the tension in her shoulders, and nervousness radiates off her.
“What’s going on, Cami girl? Talk to me.”
