I rubbed my thumb along his knuckles. “We’d take Tiny somewhere he could run.”
“He runs?”
“For a few minutes. Then he lies down and expects me to fix it.”
“Same.”
“Then groceries.”
Jace went quiet.
I looked down at him.
His face had changed. The longing there was plain and unguarded, and it hit me harder than anything he could have said.
“Groceries,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“With you.”
“If things weren’t complicated.”
His fingers tightened around mine. “I’d buy cereal you hate.”
“I assumed.”
“And those little oranges.”
“Tiny likes those.”
“Of course he does.”
“You’d forget half the list.”
“I’d forget important things, yeah. But I’d remember a sauce I saw online at three in the morning because some guy said it changed his life.”
“We’d come home with no toilet paper and six jars of sauce.”
“That’s partnership.”
I pressed my mouth to his hair for a second. He smelled like cold air, soap, and the rink, that stubborn trace of ice and sweat that never fully left him.
“What about you?” I asked. “If things weren’t complicated.”
He stared down at our joined hands. “I’d sit too close to you in public.”
My chest tightened.
“At breakfast,” he said. “In a booth. Not making a scene. Just my knee against yours under the table. I’d complain that your order was depressing. You’d steal my bacon and pretend it was for nutrition.”
“I wouldn’t steal your bacon.”
“You would. Quietly. Like a criminal with a meal plan.”
“Your body is your career.”
“My soul needs chips.”
