Page 161 of My Real Love Affair

But she was already bending down, trying to pick up the larger pieces. I saw it happen in slow motion. She reached for a shard, and as expected, the sharp edge caught her finger. Blood welled immediately.

“Fuck.” I was moving before I finished the word, scooping her up and away from the broken glass. She let out a small sound of surprise. I carried her into the living room and set her carefully on the sofa.

“Let me see.” I took her hand gently, examining the cut. It wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding pretty steadily. “Stay here. Don’t move.”

“I can go to the bathroom,” she muttered. “I don’t want to get blood on the couch.”

“Stay,” I ordered.

I grabbed the first-aid kit from the bathroom that was nothing more than a few band-aids and antibiotic ointment. I returned to the living room to find her sitting exactly where I had left her. She was staring at her bleeding finger like she couldn’t quite process what had happened. Her other hand was cupped under it to catch any blood drops.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“No.”

“Liar.”

“It’s just a cut,” she said. “Not the first. Won’t be the last.”

She was being standoffish, doing her best to pretend nothing was wrong. I knew better.

I cleaned the cut carefully, applied pressure to stop the bleeding, then wrapped it in a bandage. My hands were steady even though my heart was racing. It was a silly cut, but it wasn’t just the cut. There was so much more going on.

“There,” I said. “You’re okay. It’s not bad.”

When I looked up, I saw tears in her eyes. My gut clenched. Hard.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. I was just trying to help clean up. You did all the cooking. I shouldn’t have tried to grab the dish.”

“I’m not upset about the dish,” she whispered.

“The cut?”

She shook her head.

We looked at each other. Really looked at each other. And I saw everything I had just destroyed reflected in her hazel eyes.

“Austin,” she said, her voice breaking slightly. “If we don’t want the same things, what are we even doing? Doesn’t this all feel like a waste of time?”

I understood what she was saying. We weren’t exactly old, but we weren’t teenagers enjoying a little romance. We were at an age when dating was typically supposed to go somewhere. What were we doing?

I cared about her. More than I had ever cared about another woman. But it wasn’t always enough, was it? Not if we were heading in completely different directions. We were going to get all the feelings and intertwine our lives and for what? It would just hurt more when things ended. Because theywouldend. She was going to want children. And if she wanted three, she wasgoing to need to think about getting started on that goal. She was wasting precious time with me.

I struggled for words. “I don’t know.”

Wrong answer. I knew it as soon as I said it.

Her tears spilled over. She wiped them away angrily. “You don’t know.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just—” Why didn’t I think before I answered her questions? Why didn’t I lie? “Melody, I’m not good at this. At knowing what’s best for me. I’ve spent my whole life making the wrong choices.”

“So I’m a wrong choice now?”

“No! That’s not what I said.” I grabbed her uninjured hand. “You’re the best choice I’ve ever made. But kids? Marriage? That stuff scares me. It’s always scared me.”

“But it doesn’t scare me. It excites me. It’s what I want.” She pulled her hand away. “And if you don’t want any of that, if you’ve always wanted to live the bachelor life, then what future do we have?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m willing to figure it out. With you.”