I waved my phone in the air. “Looks like playtime is over,” I said.
“Fiancé?” he asked.
“Worse,” I said. “Wife.”
Gavin scoffed. “Right. Should I take you home or the office?”
“Home.”
We walked back to the car in silence, and once there, he opened the door, which I shook my head at and called him a gentleman.
“I’ll always be when we’re in public, baby,” he replied.
“And when we’re not?”
His gaze darted to the ring on my finger and then back to my eyes. “Leave the ring in the cupholder and give us five minutes alone. You’ll know.”
My heart skipped. “Flirt,” I forced out, and he closed my door with a grin on his lips.
I was playing with fire.
Gavin zoomed in and out of traffic, and his eyes continued to dart in my direction every chance he got. I found my cheeks blushing every time he smiled my way.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” I said.
“I can’t,” he said.
“I swear if you say something about the last time I was in this Jeep, I’m getting out at the next light.”
A quiet chuckle left him. “I was actually going to say I was happy you were back in my life,” he said, and my entire body relaxed at the genuine smile on his lips. “Still, now we know whose mind is elsewhere.”
I almost rolled my eyes. We were nearing my apartment, but as we turned at the light, a place I hadn’t been in months caught my eye.
“Wait,” I said, leaning over him. “Stop in here. I want to show you something.”
“Here?” he said as he pointed to the storage building.
“Yeah.”
The lights inside the hall came on one by one as we moved down it. Gavin didn’t say anything, and as we reached my unit, I took my keys out and unlocked the padlock. Gavin helped me lift the gate, and when I flipped on the light, he let out a low whistle.
“Holy fuck.”
It was everything I owned. Boxes stacked atop one another, couches and beds and dressers and every other piece of furniture I’d had at my apartment across the country.
I pulled the gate back down behind us—a habit as I didn’t like leaving that open for anyone to walk in while I was there alone.
“You brought everything,” he said, reaching into a box and taking out a picture frame.
“When I cleaned out the apartment I was in when we met, I put a lot of things in storage. I think I wanted to keep my belongings minimal in the new place just in case…” I paused and opened one of the dresser drawers, finding old clothes there. “But then when Ezzie and I decided to open our offices here and Tyler and I moved, I hired a few people to help me pack and drive over all my things in that unit, too, along with all the things I kept in my apartment. Having a storage place around the corner from our building was convenient. That way all of my things were here when I wanted them.”
“You honestly took nothing to your new place?” he realized.
“You’ve seen my apartment,” I said. “None of this would work in it.”
I moved to the back of the unit where most of the boxes were stacked up, and I looked for the one that had Lana’s name on it. She’d packed it herself—a box with all of our photos and some memorabilia we’d saved over the years. There was a single frame I was looking for, and when I opened up the box, it sat on top.
“Look at this,” I said as I took the picture out.
