She glanced down the hallway, didn’t see Cash, and decided she could get started alone. Larkhatedbeing alone, and she thought she was returning to a place where she wouldn’t have to be. The front door creaked as she went outside, and she left it open an inch so she wouldn’t have to twist the knob to get back in. She’d raised the back of her SUV and reached inside for the first box when Cash joined her—properly shod and jacketed.
“All right, load me up,” Cash said, and he definitely possessed more pep now.
She looked over to him. “I probably should have told you.”
“I’m just surprised.” He reached for the box in her hands and took it. “And now I have to find somewhere else to live. So yeah, maybe a little heads-up would’ve been nice.”
“Why do you have to find somewhere else to live?”
“Lark, come on.” He turned and started back up the sidewalk. “You’re my girlfriend. I can’t live with you, not when it’s a permanent thing.” He started up the steps, too far away for Lark to talk to without yelling.
“It’s not permanent,” she said aloud to herself as she picked up a box and followed him.
“You want all this in your room?” he yelled before Lark had even made it into the house.
“Yes!” she yelled back, and she went past the formal living room and down the hall and around the corner. Cash met her, took the box, spun on his heel, and marched into her bedroom. Irritation flared through her, and she stomped after him.
“I thought you’d be happy about this,” she said, filling the doorway and folding her arms. “Now we don’t have to do a long-distance relationship.”
Cash dropped the box on the floor near her bed. “I am happy about this.” He turned toward her and glared.
“Yeah, it really seems like it,” Lark said.
Cash practically smoked as his jaw jumped and his eyes burned with that dangerous fire that Larkreallywanted to singe her. “I’m just trying to do the right thing,” he said, and he stuck his hands in his pockets in the most adorable way ever. “And living with you, Lark, doesn’t feel like the right thing.”
“We’re notlivingtogether,” she said. “I’m not sharing the master bedroom with you. We’re not sleeping together, and we’re not buying groceries together, and planning meals together.”
“You being twenty feet down the hall is almost worse,” he said, an undercurrent in his voice that she did not understand.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “You were going to stay here for the whole month while I was here.”
“That was you staying in your family home for the holidays,” he said. “While I’m here, house-sitting. And if you talk to my daddy, he thinksthat’sweird. He thinks I should come home while you’re here.”
“Aren’t you home?” Lark asked. She took a step into the bedroom, her desperation almost a palpable taste on her tongue. “I mean, I know this is my parents’ house, but that’s not what I mean.” She gestured between the two of them. “Me and you. This ishome. At least I want it to be. And maybe you don’t. Maybe I have read all of the texts wrong, and everything that you’ve ever said, and the way you kissed me five minutes ago.” She gestured helplessly toward down the hall, where said kiss had just happened.
“You’re not wrong,” Cash said, and he again sounded very upset by that. “I just think it would be nice?—”
“I hate it when you say that,” Lark interrupted. He took a step toward her, but it was much more menacing than her pace toward him.
“I think it’snecessary,” he said, amending himself. “That we spend time together in a more traditional way. Not while you’re on vacation, and I’m trying to impress you. Not while you’re staying down the hall while you’re home from college, while I’m trying to make sure your brothers know that I’d be a good husband for you.
“But, you know, everyday life where I have to go to work and balance that with a relationship with you, where I get to see more of your quirks and you get to see mine. Because honestly, Lark, I think you’re falling for a vacation-version of me, and our lives are not going to be spent on vacation.”
She swallowed, wishing what he said wasn’t true, but hearing the ring of rightness in her heart.
He moved forward now in a much more passive way and drew her into his chest. “You feel very much like home to me,” he whispered. “And I would gladly spend all my days holding you, and kissing you, and telling you how beautiful you are. Honest, I would, but there’s more to life than that.”
Lark nodded against his chest and wound her arms tight around him. “I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered.
“I can’t stay here, Songbird.” His breath wafted across the side of her neck, and his lips followed soon after. “I want to—really badly. But I’ve put myself in a dangerous situation like this before and barely escaped.” He pulled back and looked at her. “Do you understand what I’m saying? You’re just too tempting, and it’s not right.”
Lark nodded. “You don’t have to leave today.”
“Oh, I can’t leave today,” Cash said. “I’ve made modifications to the house that I have to fix before I go.”
“Modifications?” Lark asked.
“You’ve seen the master bedroom. I have to re-hang drapes and get out new bedding. I’ve also added several pieces of workout equipment in the gym downstairs.”
