“Well…I mean, I’d have to see you in it first. Your thighs might be a little big.”
“A little big?” he blurted out. “Excuse me, but I have appropriate-sized thighs for a boxer.”
“Exactly. You’re almost too bulky. Not that I’m complaining. I love your muscles, but if I were to put you in a suit, you’d probably rip the fabric.”
“Thank God I’ll never have to be in a suit,” he muttered.
“Well, maybe someday. I mean, if you’re going to a wedding, you might want to wear one.”
“Yeah, I can’t think of a single time I’ve ever been invited to a wedding where I wore a suit.”
“Then your own wedding,” I teased. “No woman wants to walk down the aisle in a gorgeous gown, only to see her potential husband wearing slacks and a polo.” I chuckled at the image in my head, but immediately realized my mistake when the lines around his face tightened.
Seconds dragged on to minutes where neither of us spoke. I’d committed a major faux pas by bringing up the M word. Marriage was not on the table, and by saying it, it was like Iwas testing the waters to see where he stood now that we’d been living together for a while. That was one mistake I would never make again.
“Do you think about that often?” he asked once I was engrossed in the movie again.
“Think about what?” When I turned to face him, I wished I hadn’t. There was a tightness to his voice, and stress lines around his eyes. All this from a simple teasing statement. The man did not want to get married, and by bringing it up, I had only ruined the night.
“Your future husband.”
I was so thrown by his willingness to discuss the subject that I didn’t know how to answer.
“Um…not really. I mean, I think about what it might be like someday.”
“What do you think about?”
I huffed out a laugh, knowing anything I said from here on out would only dig a relationship grave I couldn’t climb out of.
“Why are we talking about this?”
“You brought it up.”
“I was teasing you about your unwillingness to wear a suit.”
“And you brought up marriage.”
“In the general sense of how it related to the conversation. I wasn’t asking about your wedding preferences.”
But nothing I said would stop this runaway train. He was already looking at me differently, ready to flee the house if I so much as even said something that led him to believe I wanted to marry him.
“I think I’ll go to bed. I’m beat.”
He gently placed my leg back on the couch and hurried down the hall, leaving me all alone with the bomb that just imploded and tore what fragile bits of our relationship remained to shreds.
It was all coming to an end. I could feel it, and when things got too hard for him, he would only run away.
37
SAM
I had just finishedmy workout when the text came in.
We got him.
Relief rushed through me so hard and fast that I didn’t even bother to tear off the wraps on my hands before running out of the gym to the police station. As soon as I walked through the door, I could feel the relief in the air. Officers were laughing and joking, Bea was passing out donuts, and Mav was leaning against his office doorframe, talking with Parker.
Storming through the crowd, I nearly shoved one of the officers over to get to them. “You got him? Where is that son of a bitch?”
