“You’ve been following me?” I ask and he nods as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. I push the hair back from my face and down my scalp and look down at the floral design in my comforter.
Move in with him? It’s so very sudden. I thought he liked me, and then I thought he hated me. Now, he’s falling for me, and this is all within just a couple of months. I like my apartment. I’m proud of the life I’ve made here and the woman I’m becoming inside these walls. I never planned on staying here forever but to move out now, and for him?
“This is you being impulsive. I want this to work, but we have to take it one day at a time. What do I do if in a month you realize you’re bored with me and want out? Then what? Not only will I be crushed and devastated, but I’ll be homeless. I’m not taking that chance.”
Alexander’s mouth falls. He sits up and rises to his knees taking a position directly in front of me. He lowers his face so it’s even with my own.
I am still looking down at the large hibiscus flower on my comforter and playing my fingers along my thigh, trying to focus on anything but his brooding face. He does brooding well.
“Emma, look at me,” he commands.
Reluctantly, I lift my gaze. He takes his hands in mine and skims his fingers along my scar.
“I want to get bored of you. I want you to get bored with me. I want the ordinary and the mundane. I want the exciting and the extraordinary. I will never want you out, because you and I are one. Isn’t that what you want?”
Damn him and his perfect words. I bite my lip and think of the predicament. He’s promising forever after a few hours of reconciliation. He wants me to give him all of me when I’m not ready to hand it over. And, despite what he’s saying now, I fear he will get up one day and decide he wants out. We haven’t known each other long and his track record is far from impeccable. It’s all moving fast, and I need to gather the reins.
I want to be with him, though, more than anything in the world. “It would have been nice to be asked.”
He smirks and lifts my hand to his mouth. “Emma Paige.” Those plumb, beautiful lips kiss my knuckle. “Will you move in with me?”
I blush at his sweetness and give him a cocky smile. “No. I like my apartment.”
His face falls, but he doesn’t relent. Instead, he looks around the room and resigns. “Well, it looks like I’m moving in here then.”
My head rolls back with laughter. When his body crawls up mine, I stop laughing and let him get very, very serious.
With me.
On me.
In me.
“Are you sniffing me?”
I am nestled into the crook of Alexander’s neck. His arm is draped around me, holding me tight as his fingers play with the loose strands of my hair. It’s sometime in the afternoon. We haven’t left my apartment all day. Right now, we are lying in my bed, listening to music and enjoying each other.
My cheeks redden at being caught smelling my boyfriend.
Oh, God, that sounds so high school.
“Yes. In Italy you smelled of sea and soap. Now you just smell like soap.” I burrow my head back into its special spot along the side of his neck and resume playing with the light hair of his stomach. He never wears cologne. I tried to broach the topic in Capri but he skirted the issue. If we’re going to make it work he has to tell me everything.
“Who was she?”
His body stiffens beneath me. My head is so close to his pulse I can feel it elevate through his skin. Whoever she is, he’s not entirely over her. He doesn’t answer immediately so I push harder. “Was she the first or the second love?”
“The second.” He lets out a long breath and his pulse begins to taper.
“What was her name?”
“Does it matter?”
I look up and lightly kiss his tightened jawbone and take my spot back into the crook of his neck. “It matters to me.”
His breathing is deep yet controlled as if he’s trying to calm himself. Who ever she is, whatever she did to him, has scarred him deeper than the wound on my hand.
“Her name was Kathryn.”
