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“I was going to ask you.”
He opens the door to the Camaro for me and I slip inside before watching him walk around the front of the car. There is one thing I’ve wanted to do lately but it’s a little silly and I’m not sure he’d want to. He climbs behind the wheel and glances at me as I bite my lip.
“What?”
“Well,” I muse, pursing my lips. “There is something I want to do but it’s kind of silly and you may not want to.”
“What is it?”
“Well, when Mom, Theo, and I were traveling,” I say, unable to think of a better word to call my nomadic first years. “We would get bored in the hotel rooms so Mom started buying us board games and it kind of became a tradition for us. It’s been a long time since we played and I was just thinking about it this morning.”
His brows furrow. “You want to play board games?”
“Yeah. Is that stupid?”
“No, not at all. Actually, I have an idea.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts texting someone. Leaning across the car, I try to peek at what he’s saying but he hides it from me with a grin on his face. “Just wait. It’s a surprise.”
“I thought we went over this last night and again this morning when you cooked me french toast. I don’t like surprises.”
He chuckles, still hiding the phone from me. “Aw and see here I thought you were coming around to the idea.”
“I have no clue what gave you that idea.”
I cross my arms over my chest and he just grins as he continues typing away. When he’s finally done, he puts the phone back in his pocket and fires up the Camaro. As he pulls out of the parking spot, I glare at him.
“Are you really not going to tell me?”
He laughs. “You’ll find out soon enough, baby. How was your morning?”
Sighing, I tell him about work, which was fairly uneventful, and he tells me about some bike he’s working on. As we pull up in front of the house, I scan the area, looking for both whatever surprise he’s planning this time and still unable to shake the habits my mother instilled in me. The door to the Camaro opens and he scowls at me.
“What are you doing?”
I shake my head, climbing out. “It’s stupid.”
“Tell me anyway,” he insists, taking my hand as he shuts the door and I sigh.
“When we were younger, Mom had us play this game whenever we left the place we were staying. We would have to scan the room and memorize where everything was. When we came back, she would quiz us and if we got it wrong, we had to do push-ups and wall sits.”
He glances down at me, his eyes wide. “Wow. That’s…intense.”
“Yep, it was and even now as an adult, I do it without thinking.”
“I suppose that was the point of it though, wasn’t it?” he asks and I nod as I unlock the front door.
“You’re not wrong but it’s a pain in the ass. Especially when I can’t remember how I left the damn curtains. It’ll bother me all night long.”
He blows out a breath and shuts the door behind us. “You know, I half thought you were exaggerating when you told me about your childhood.”
“Nope,” I snap, letting out a humorless laugh. “I could also knock you out before you even realize what’s happening if I wanted to but I won’t.”
“What did you train in?” He sits at the dining room table and I go into the kitchen, grabbing two mugs and turning the coffee maker on.
“Boxing, Jiu Jitsu, Judo, Krav Maga… If you can think of it, we probably did it for a little bit. When Theo and I turned twelve, Mom made us choose three to focus on.”
“And you chose?”
“Krav Maga, Kickboxing, and Jiu Jitsu.”
