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The Phoenix thing hadn’t seemed as huge as my problem, but I saw his point. And his apology—the thing was, he’d pegged me right. Outside of another workaholic, no one was going to appreciate my work style. “I would say people make it work long-distance, but I don’t even know what that would look like with our schedules.”

Kyle nodded and dropped his gaze to his plate. He moved around a couple of the sausage links. “We’re both pretty royally fucked on this one.”

I grunted and took a big bite of pancake followed by some sausage. “Has Greta ever considered infusing these pancakes with sausage too? The combination with syrup is damn good.”

The rapid topic shift didn’t faze him. “She’s done that a couple times. She’s never happy with how big the sausage ends up. Sometimes I just do a roll up.” He took one of the sausages, wrapped the pancake around it, swirled it in the syrup on his plate, and took a big bite. “It’s not exactly the proper way to eat these, and it can be far from tidy. Mom is probably twitching in her sleep right now because I’ve just done this when I’m eating with someone else.”

We laughed while I did exactly what he’d done. It was perfection. We ate a couple more pancakes the same way.

“How do we do this?” My voice broke. I hated that even though it perfectly expressed the situation.

“We can at least stay friends, right?” Kyle looked at me earnestly.

“I… um…” My thoughts scattered. I didn’t know how to finish that.

“Or we become boyfriends who have to live in different places.” I wasn’t ready for that answer. “We see each other as often as we can. You managed to come see me in Vegas. I’ve certainly got the means to travel. I’ll be here during the off-season for sure. We keep going and see what happens. If we both want it, we should be able to figure it out. “

Maybe all wasn’t lost.

“I know I haven’t been the best.” I fought against looking somewhere else.

“And I haven’t been the most flexible either.”

“I won’t go silent again.” Quiet hadn’t done either of us any good, and I wouldn’t do that again.

“Good. That was the worst.”

“For what it’s worth, I felt bad every time I saw one of your messages.”

We exhaled at the same time. He looked at me with the sweetest gaze, which quickened my pulse.

“I’d been so worried about this talk.” Kyle sounded relieved, which unlocked some of my tension even as the board meeting loomed. “More breakfast? It’s too good not to finish.”

“Yes, please.”

Impulsively, I grabbed his hand and kissed his knuckles. He tasted like syrup since it’d been the hand he held the pancake with.

We grabbed more of everything and kept eating—except we smiled as we went instead of wearing various looks of dread. The board meeting would be what it was, but I had Kyle again, and that made whatever came next okay.

We finished a crazy amount of food. I’m not sure where I put all of it. While Kyle was refueling from the game, the meal was far bigger than my usual.

Before we could utter a word after the feast, we yawned simultaneously.

“Do you want to crash here?” Kyle asked. That was a surprise.

“I’d love to. I’ve got to get up early though. It’ll mean an early alarm.”

He leaned in and brushed my cheek with a kiss.

“That’s okay. Like I said, I can catch more sleep on the flight to Dallas.”

I cleared the dishes to the sink. As the hot water flowed, I swirled some soap from the dispenser onto the plates.

“Leave those. I can clean up in the morning.”

“No can do. I heard something recently that the rule was whoever didn’t cook had to do the dishes, and I think you did most of the cooking.”

“I think it was more equal. I’ll help.”