4
Somehow, he’d managed to screw up his meeting with Larke. Observing the emotions playing across her face, Chase searched his mind, determined to figure out where it’d started going downhill and ended with her looking so sad. At a complete lost, he remembered the necklace inside his hand.
“How comes you’re not asking for your pearls back?”
She gave him a weak smile that somehow made him feel worse. “The necklace by itself isn’t important. I gave it to you. Keep it.”
Chase groaned inwardly. He quietly waited for her to start telling him off for whatever it was he’d said to upset her this time. Larke did nothing. She wouldn’t even make eye contact with him. Her gaze was centered on the damn ducks waddling around beside the pond.
“All right,” he grunted. “What’d I say that––”
She turned to him, cutting him off by releasing a loud deep sigh. “I’m Larke. I’m notjusta black girl. Okay?”
He nodded slowly. “I’m starting to realize that.” It was the truth. He’d had an entire week to come to the conclusion that Larke wasn’tjustanother girl he wanted to fuck. She was…different. How different? He was working on figuring that out.
She peered into his face, her eyes searching. “Really, Chase? Because we can’t be friends if you’re going to keep referring to me like that. Or view me as inferior. I can tell you now, it won’t work at all.”
Friends?
Chase arched his brows. “I never said anything about us being friends.”
Larke shifted on the seat beside him. “Then what do you expect? I mean, usually relationships, attraction starts out with people being friends. Well sort of friends, I would imagine. I thought that’s what you wanted by showing me the necklace. That we could be friends now?”
He chuckled softly. “I was eleven, Larke. Friendship is all I could’ve had with a girl. That’s not what I want with you.”
She chewed on her bottom lip, looking almost scared again. For a second he was afraid she’d move away from him. Reject the faintest suggestion of being with him. She didn’t. Chase let out the breath of relief he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in.
“I’m not sure I can offer you anything more than friendship. I’m no longer afraid of you. So you’re wrong on that part. I need some time to process all of this. You said I had you feeling messed up, but how do you think I feel right now? I never expected any of this––for the two of us to sit here, pretending like there’s nothing in between us.”
“Wouldit be bad if we did a little pretending?”
She shot him a pained smile. “I don’t know. Pretending might work, but the question is for how long.” She shook her head then. “No. That wouldn’t work for us. I don’t need you to pretend. All I want is for you to see me for who I am, Larke Justine Taylor.” Her smile widened, reaching all the way to her eyes––eyes he was beginning to find prettier and prettier by the second. “A girl who was named after a bird.”
Chase grinned, noting how Larke’s entire face seemed to light up with her smile still in place. “It’s a cute name. It fits you.”
“Thanks,” she said shyly, welding her gaze to his.
His cheeks grow hot under her stare. What was he, twenty-four or eleven? Chase cleared his throat. Back to business. “What you said before, about not pretending. I don’t want to either.” He exhaled a deep breath. “As for what I said earlier––I didn’t mean it the way it came out. I know it might be hard to believe, really hard actually, but I don’t have a problem with you being black. I don’t see you as my enemy or anything like that. To be honest, when I look at you, I see the girl who shared her candy and sweater with me when I didn’t deserve it. More than that, I see a woman I’d like to be with. Friendship, whatever you wanna call it, as long as it’ll make you feel comfortable with me.”
