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He couldn’t look less thrilled about it if he tried. I just don’t get it. The man shows up with gifts and then talks like committing to me is some kind of chore.
I shake my head and reach for the door.
He steps in front of me, blocking my path, and pulls me against his chest with his good arm before I can protest.
“Wait. Just—listen.” His voice drops, rough and almost desperate. “I’m fucking this up. I know I am.”
I try to pull away, but his arm tightens for half a second, like the thought of letting me go actually hurts him. Then he catches himself and loosens his hold, just enough that I could step back if I wanted to.
“I can’t deal with you not talking to me,” he says.
The raw honesty in his voice stops me cold.
“You’re making me crazy, Carmen.”
I look up at him.
His eyes are sharp, but there’s something uncertain beneath them.
“I want this. You. Me. Whatever the hell this is.”
He cups the back of my neck with his good hand and tilts my face up so I meet his gaze.
“I should have said that when you asked,” he says, voice low. “So I’m saying it now. We’re together.”
The words send heat rushing through me.
For a long moment, I can’t speak.
Then I nod slowly. “Okay.”
His thumb strokes once along my jaw.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
Something in his face breaks loose. Not relief exactly. Something deeper. Rougher.
“Good,” he says.
He looks at me for a long moment, then pulls me back into his chest. His hand settles at my waist as his gaze flicks past me to the street.
“Let’s go inside,” he says.
The moment the door closes behind us, he kisses me like the last few days have been eating him alive—deep and desperate. I melt into it, my hands sliding up his chest as he backs me against the door. His body presses into mine, hard and insistent.
He breaks the kiss with a low groan.
“Too bad about that period,” he murmurs. He brushes my hair gently from my face, thumb stroking my cheek with surprising tenderness. “You feeling alright?”
The genuine concern in his eyes makes my heart squeeze in the best possible way.
I slide my hand down his front and rub my palm over the hard length of him through his jeans. “It actually finished yesterday.”
Levi’s grin is instant.
The next night, Levi, Theo, and I are tucked into a red vinyl booth at the little diner on Maple Street. It’s nothing fancy—checkered floors, old neon signs, the smell of coffee and fried food in the air. The kind of place Maverick would have curled his lip at and called greasy.
