“You left,” she said.
“I had to.”
I slid my hand over her knee and gripped her thigh. My eyes were shutting and I couldn’t keep them open anymore.
I used every last ounce of my consciousness to heave myself over. I rolled and put my head in her lap.
Devi kind of groaned. She drifted her hand over my hair, and it felt like everything.
“What happened to you while you were away, Dane?”
“I missed you.”
Devi woke up in the morning to daylight pouring over her through the living room windows. And me, sitting next to her on the couch, watching her sleep.
The first thing she said when she’d blinked her eyes open was, “We need to talk.”
“Yeah. We do.”
She sat up next to me and her eyes landed on the steaming mug on the coffee table in front of her. “Is that coffee?”
“It is.” I smiled at her a little. “Are you going to pour it down the sink?”
She glanced at me, then picked up the mug, took a small sip, and seemed to melt. “Thank you. I needed this.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How long have you been up?”
“A while.”
She looked at the pizza boxes that had been left open, ravaged on the island. “I guess you found the pizza.”
“Yeah. I was fucking starving.”
She ran a hand through her thick hair. Her brown eyes met mine. “Do you like me, Dane?”
I blinked at her. I’d just sat here for like an hour, watching her sleep, thinking nothing but how much I liked her.
So somehow, her words just didn’t compute.
Plus, the hangover.
“What?” I said.
“I mean, do you really like me?”
“Yeah, I like you.”
She gave a soundless sigh of relief. “Then why did you leave?”
I shook my head slowly. “I told you, that had nothing to do with you. I know that probably doesn’t feel very true. And it probably sounds selfish as fuck. Because it was selfish. But I had to go.”
She took a breath. “Okay. But now that you’re back… Are you heading back to Toronto? Do you still have things to work out with your family?”
“There’s really nothing to work out. I told them I was leaving. I gave up my inheritance. My job. Everything.”
“What?”
