“Right, and soon after…I fell in love with you. It’s scary as hell.” I gulped, emotion coming into my voice that I wanted to hide. “I planned on texting you dirty things and asking you to be my boyfriend. I know we’ve had this joke going on for weeks and it’s fun, but then I realized I wanted the label. I wanted to be your girlfriend.”
His eyes softened to that warm coffee and cream color and he took hold of my face in a slow kiss. I closed my eyes, tasting him and enjoying the slow build-up. I pushed his chest though. “No, no hanky panky yet.”
“Hanky panky?” He chuckled. “You want to be my girlfriend—I feel like I won and I want to claim my prize.”
“I don’t recall you asking me.”
“Uh, you admitted to wanting it. That kind of makes it a thing.”
“Nah, try harder.” I winked at him. He made a sound in his throat and positioned himself on top of me. His elbows were on either side of my face and he stared into my eyes. He gently kissed my forehead, each eye and finally reached my mouth.
“Callie?”
“Yeah.”
“I love you.” He bit down on my favorite spot. “Will you please be my girlfriend? I’ll watch Sox games with you. I’ll help you cook and support you in anything you do. I’ll never question what we have or take it for granted. I see you in my life. You’ve become my best friend.”
A tear leaked out of my eye and he smiled down at me as though I was the best thing in the world. “Damn, my allergies.”
“Cute. So, your answer?”
“Yeah. How could I say no to that?” I grabbed his face and kissed him. I kissed the hell out of that man and did it some more. It was slow this time. As if we had all the seconds in the world, and I guess we did.
Our looks were a little longer, our touches were a little gentler and when we crashed together…my heart saidgame over.
Naked and a little breathless, I moved to lie on his chest. “I trust you completely. I’m sorry I didn’t express it enough.”
“I know that now. I needed an outlet for some anger and you were up to bat.” He ran his hands through my hair and sighed. “I fucking love your hair.”
His compliment warmed me. “Thanks, Zade.”
“I need to tell you about what happened yesterday.” I lifted my head and saw pain etched on his face. “It’s a head trip.”
“I’m listening.”
“Zaria received a letter from our father. I haven’t seen him in nineteen years. I don’t remember him.” He ran his hand over his jaw and I frowned. I knew this wasn’t going to be a good story. “He died.”
“Shit.” I hissed and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I didn’t feel as bad as I should about his death. I think mourning someone you didn’t know is complicated and hard. He wrote us a letter and when I ran out of class yesterday, it was because Zaria texted me to get over there ASAP.”
“You should’ve told me there was an emergency! I would’ve helped or something.”
“I know, shit. I should’ve told you or asked for help. I handled it really fucking badly. My sister had been getting weird calls and letters in the mail and it freaked me out. I’d been worrying about someone stalking her and to find out it is someone delivering the letter of my dead dad? It fucks with you.”
“It would fuck with anyone.” I smoothed my hand up and down his arm, needing to touch him and give him any strength I could.
“He had another family. Has another family. We have half siblings. Three of them.” He spoke in broken sentences and my heart hurt for him. “He wants us to meet them, I think. I can’t really tell. There’s a reading of a will and he said he left me and Zaria something. I don’t want a cent though. Zaria doesn’t either.” He stopped talking and tilted his chin toward me. “What are you thinking right now?”
“Hell. All sorts of things. I’m sad that you have to go through this. This has to be really hard. I think you can always donate money or set it aside to figure out later. This is like a huge Band-Aid being ripped off.”
“Yeah. You aren’t kidding.”
“Do you want to meet your half siblings?”
“I don’t know. Zaria does. I don’t care enough. Am I awful?” He fisted my blanket in his hand and sighed. “He wrote that he was proud of us. That he’d been following us growing up but stayed away out of cowardice. What kind of life is that? He had two kids and he never did anything for us, until he died. That’s bullshit.”
“It is bullshit. I don’t think you are awful at all. As I said, I think this is going to take some time to digest and you don’t have to make any decision right now.”
