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“Don’t even tell me that,” I mumbled. “If I think about him thinking about me, I’m going to catch fire.”

She laughed.

“I don’t know how much longer I can live with him,” I said, almost to myself. “It’s not healthy.”

“Do you like living with him?”

“Yeah. I really do. There isn’t anything about him that I don’t like.”

“Could you?” she said. “Move out if you wanted to?”

I looked at her over the table. “You know what? Yes. I could.”

I’d officially recovered my credit. It wasn’t great yet—I still had to build it up—but my dad’s debt had finally fallen off and it was enough to get me in the door for a lease. I was making enough money doing graze boards that I could afford my own apartment if I wanted one. And comfortably.

For the first time in my life, I was not pigeonholed by poverty into living with someone I didn’t want to live with. I had the choice. It’s the thing I’d tried explaining once to Mike, the thing that Chris seemed to innately understand.

This is what love looks like.

It’s lifting someone up even if you know it means they can get out.

“There is literally nowhere else I want to be and nobody else I want to be with,” I said.

“So it’s finally smash,” she said, smiling around her straw.

I played with the paper label on my cup. “It’s like we both know and acknowledge that there’s something there, but we can’t do anything about it.”

“Have you guys talked about it?”

“Not really,” I said. “Not after that first night. Maybe one day, when all of this with Mike is behind us and he’s moved on… I don’t know. I just can’t ever picture everyone being okay with it.”

My phone vibrated on the table. I picked it up thinking it was going to be Chris again with another Woofarine update. It wasn’t. I sat up straight.

“What?” Lexi asked.

I shook my head, grinning. “Nothing.”

Chris deserved to hear it first.

47

CHRIS

When i heard the key in the lock, Woofarine dove off the couch cushion to meet her and I immediately sat up and smiled at the door.

Larissa came in beaming. “You will not believe what just happened,” she said, peeling off her jacket.

“What?”

“I got a graze table order!”

I brightened. “You did?”

“They want three,” she said, hanging up her coat. “One for an engagement party, a smaller one for the rehearsal dinner, and then a big one for the wedding to serve a hundred and fifty!”

I grinned at her and got up.

She practically bounced while I crossed the room.