“No. Washington state. My dad is an engineer. My mother is a math teacher. Aside from being a dreamy, head-in-the-clouds artistic type, which made and makes no sense to my parents at all, I had a very easy, lovely upbringing. Probably even spoiled thanks to my health issues.”
He frowned. “Health issues?”
She waved it away. “Oh, it’s all sorted now. Just some allergies and asthma. It just took a while to figure out, so I had a few hospital stays when I was very little to freak my parents out. Kinda stuck with all of us. Trauma for them, trauma-lite for me.”
“Trauma-lite,” he echoed.
“Should we call yours extra-mega trauma?”
He laughed again, the nice one not the harsh one. “Yeah. At the very least. But I guess it makes sense then. I’d rather be a sick head-in-the-clouds dreamer than a sick realist.”
It was…shockingly astute. She had used books and fiction and her own little stories to take her mind off her allergy issues growing up.
“And I’d rather be just about anything other than a math teacher,” he added.
It made her laugh, becausesame, but then he moved for the door again. He was leaving, and of course heshould. He needed to. But…
The thought of being there alone with her thoughts and security camera and…everything, it caused a little spiral of panic to move through her.
He reached for the door, and she just couldn’t bear the thought.
“What about dessert?” she asked, desperately she could admit. To herself anyway.
But Royal studied her like he fully understood. “You know, if you’re afraid to be alone, you can tell me that. You’ve every right to be afraid.”
“Says the guy who escaped from a biker gang and became a cop.”
“Am I going to regret telling you that?”
“Probably.” What was the point in pretending? “Why did you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I do a lot of things when it comes to you.” He said it with a smile, but his eyes were serious. They were always serious. And he did tend to look at her…
She didn’t have words for it, and she had words for everything. There was just this…weight to it. Like he looked at her andsawher.
Surely she…was just imagining things.
“Night, Franny.”
She should say good night. He wanted to leave, needed to leave, and she had no right to keep him there.
But…
“Okay, I admit it. I’m afraid. I don’t want to be alone in here. It freaks me out. Not just some guy out there wanting to threaten me or worse, but being in here with cameras so you can hear my every talking-to-myself moment if you want to.”
“You talk to yourself?”
“I could make cookies,” she said, totally desperate now. “And you could just stay a little longer. Just… Please, I know it’s silly and intrusive and a million other things you didn’t sign up for, but…”
“Sure.” He took his hand off the knob. “I like cookies.”
Relief swelled through her like a tide, and since she desperately wanted this to be okay, to not be ruining his life, she walked over to the couch, grabbed the remote and handed it to him. “You can watch TV if you want. I’ve got the streaming services in the first row, and then if you scroll a little bit, I’ve got a baseball subscription. There should be a few games on tonight.”
He took the remote but looked at her dubiously. “Youlike baseball?”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Because you just don’t seem like the type. You told me yourself you’re head-in-the-clouds artistic.”
