“Why?” I asked, the word flung out like a splatter on the windshield, unexpected and probably unpleasant.
I saw Rowe glance at me, but I kept my eyes forward. “Why don’t you need the movie?”
“Yeah,” I said and tried to make myself clearer. “I mean – why me? Why now? I thought… this weekend, I thought you didn’t want…”
Rowe sighed. “I’m sorry for giving you that impression,” he said. “I just… it’s not that I don’twant. It’s – with the fact that I knew I had to leave town soon, I didn’t want to get your hopes up. To start something we wouldn’t be able to finish.”
“And now?” I asked. “You haven’t seen the place yet.”
Rowe pulled into an underground parking garage, the darkness plunging my eyes into a loss for a second until they adjusted. We drove through patches of dark and light from barred windows at the front, then moved deeper into the shadows to park. Rowe stopped the car and turned everything off before he finally turned to look at me and answer.
“I don’t have it figured out,” he said. “But I want to stay here so badly, believe me, I could live almost anywhere. And you… you’re one more reason to make me want to.”
All I could hear was the rushing of blood in my ears. I stared into Rowe’s face, waiting for the trick, thebut, the thing that he would say next that would crush me again. But nothing came – and all I saw in his eyes was an honest desire.
“I…” I cleared my throat and started again. “I want to help you. To stay, I mean. Rowe, don’t leave town. Please. Not yet.”
“You’ve already helped me quite a bit,” Rowe said with a smile. He shook his head and sighed. “Look, I don’t know how this is all going to turn out.”
“I’ll help you,” I promised, and to my surprise, I really meant it. “I don’t have any other jobs to go to. If this one is no good, I can spend every evening, every weekend, and every lunch break hunting for apartments for you. I can call around everywhere I can think of, answer every ad in the paper and try to talk them down. Whatever it takes. Please, just – say you won’t leave town.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Rowe said with a gentle smile. “I don’t know how I’m going to work this out. I don’t know what this place is going to be like. But this opportunity at work – it’s too good to say no. I’m staying. And I think this opportunity to see where we could go is too good to pass up, too.”
I could barely speak or think. I was so overwhelmed with everything he was saying. All aboutme.
Not too long ago, I’d given up hope of ever hearing someone say they wanted to be with me. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I would have to scramble for drops of affection – for one night at a time, or one fumble in a storage closet where no one could see. But this…
“Are you saying…?”
“I’d like to date you, Xavi,” Rowe said frankly. He reached out across the gearshift to take my hand. “Seriously. Exclusively. I want to see if we could make a relationship work.”
I nodded, slowly at first and then faster, unable to say anything else. My throat was choked up, my eyes stinging with hot unshed tears. Rowe was grinning but I could barely look at him. I was so…
Happy.
I was happy.
“There’s way too much space between us right now,” Rowe said, and I had never agreed with anything more fervently in my life.
We both unbuckled our seatbelts and practically leaped out of the car. Rowe had to pause to grab his cane and get himself upright, so by the time he was out, I had walked all the way around to his side. I wasn’t sure how he felt about people in his building seeing him with me, but I needn’t have worried. As soon as I was in reaching distance he grabbed my arm and pulled me closer, close enough to press his lips against mine, sending tendrils of fire through me.
He broke away to look into my eyes with such intensity that I thought I might pass out – swoon right there in his arms.
“Upstairs,” he said, the one rough and raspy word filled with so much lust and desire that it was all I could do to turn and cast around for some way to get up there.
Rowe took my hand firmly and led me to an elevator that tore us skywards far too slowly. I clung to his hand like I was drowning and he was driftwood, doing everything I could to stay afloat. In a daze, I followed him out into a hallway, nondescript and dark, and then into a small apartment room where the bed seemed to be in the middle of the living room.
Whether he lived in a mansion, a palace, or a shack, I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted him. Needed him.
Needed the way he could make me feel like no one else ever had.
The second the door was closed behind us, he spun me around and placed me against the door, gentle but firm, taking care that I didn’t hit my back or my head against the hard surface. Then his mouth was on mine again, but this time deeper, needier, greedier. His hands held me in place, cupping the sides of my face, then trailed down my sides, turning my bones liquid wherever they passed.
I was powerless under him. Rowe leaned back and gazed into my eyes, and even though he wasn’t kissing me anymore, my blood was still liquid fire, my limbs still jelly.
“I want you,” he whispered fiercely, and I could only whimper in response.
Rowe was all kisses, trailing them over my neck and shoulder as he tugged the buttons on my shirt undone, easing the fabric out of the way. I’d never enjoyed wearing button-down shirts for work and formal events, but Rowe – oh, Rowe made them feel so sexy – moving down my body one button at a time while he hungrily kissed and sucked my flesh.
