Chapter 41
ACQUIRE ME
LAKE
“I have only two eggs,” I announce in the morning as I stare at the fridge, frustrated with the barrenness of it. “Hmm. I didn’t think this through.”
Remy’s right next to me, peering into the appliance too. “I’ve noticed there’s no berry bar either.”
“But there are berries,” I say, grabbing the blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries I ordered from the grocery store last night. They arrived sometime after her second or third orgasm. It’s a haze. I’m not sure when.
I hold up the basket of blueberries like it’s Simba. “Behold.”
She laughs, her cheeks flushing as she sweeps strands of hair from her face.
My heart stutters.
She looks good here in my kitchen, the sunlight streaming past Thor at the top of the cat tower, illuminating her pretty face. She looks good and right. Like she belongs here.
Like she ought to be here every damn day.
And…where the hell did that thought come from? From the berries? The fridge?
No, from your head and your heart, dipshit.
But she’s not ready for that. Hell, I’m not ready for that. Except, is that still true?
Am I?
My damn heart is thundering as I stand here in the kitchen, frozen in place, hoisting up blue fruit the morning after an intense night with the woman of my dreams. Who’s looking cozy and happy to be here…with me.
“We can just have berries,” she says, breaking me from my dangerous thoughts of a future that’s not in the cards.
Or is it?
I shake my head, rooting myself to the here and now.
“But that’s not what’s on the list,” I point out, sticking to the rules. “We’ve got to follow the list. Number four of Five Things To Do Before I Say I Do is make breakfast together and clean it up.”
She shoots me a challenging stare. “Why don’t berries count as breakfast?”
I set the carton down on the counter, forcing myself to focus on something other than the absolutely inconvenient realization that I want something more than a fake girlfriend. The list.
“Hold on,” I say, then I duck into the bedroom, grab a sweatshirt, and tug it on. I race back out to the kitchen, snag my phone, and say, “Be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“You’ll see. Back in five.”
I shove my feet into sneakers I keep by the door, trot down the hall, punch the elevator button and zoom to the lobby, then out onto the street. I run down to the corner, pop into a bakery, and snag a loaf of fresh sourdough.
Like it’s a football and I’m running it into the end zone, I race back inside, up the elevator and to my penthouse in four minutes and thirty seconds.
“Behold again!”
She’s at the sink, washing berries, because of course she’s doing something. My heart caves as the memory of her the night of the Jumbotron flashes before me. Remy, pushing the cart of stuffed foxes. Remy, working. Remy, hiding under a hat she didn’t want to wear.
Only this time, her hair’s twisted in one of those messy buns that is incomparably sexy, and she’s wearing my T-shirt. She’s making herself at home in my place.
It’s a whole new Remy, and that heavy feeling vanishes like smoke. It’s replaced by something else entirely—something like hope.
“I am beholding it,” she says as she shakes a colander, the water dripping into the sink. She went through my cupboards and helped herself to a colander, and I fucking love that she didn’t think twice about it.
“Have you ever had the world’s most greatest toast?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Have I, Lake?”
That challenging but warm voice of hers makes my heart fucking shimmy again.
It’s just toast. Toast and berries and the simplest possible breakfast we could make, but it’s also her and me in my kitchen honoring someone else’s list together.
Coming up with solutions, working with what we’ve got—two people who don’t love to cook are making food.
Ten minutes later, she’s set the table and I’ve made regular toast, avocado toast, and peanut butter and banana toast drizzled in honey. I put the plate down on the table. “It’s a toast flight.”
“A toast flight and our very own berry bar. I feel like the bride would be pleased,” she says, but her brow furrows. “We should give her a name.”
“Good point. I think we should too.”
She pauses, her gaze locked on an unseen point in the distance. “I’m picturing her dress. It had lace on the bodice. Why don’t we call her Lacey?”
“Works for me,” I say, and offer Remy first dibs at the buffet.
“It’s almost impossible to choose,” she says, but she grabs a slice with banana and peanut butter.
Surprise, surprise. “I would not have pegged you for a banana and peanut butter person.”
“Why not?”
“Banana’s kind of an acquired taste. Not everybody likes it, especially on toast, especially with peanut butter.”
She gives me a pleased look, lips quirking, eyes twinkling. “Well, you’re an acquired taste, aren’t you?”
I laugh. Maybe I am.
She bites into the toast, hums in pleasure, then meets my gaze and says, “And I guess I like you, Lake.”
And that’s it. That’s just it. Might as well wave the white flag. I don’t deserve her. I’m shit at relationships. But I’m pretty sure I am falling head over fucking heels for my fake girlfriend. And I want to tell her “Then acquire me.”
But that is a thought that needs a strategy, a careful plan—a strategy for convincing this incredible woman to go on a real date with me.
She motions to the bread. “Which one’s your first choice?”
I pick up the one with banana and peanut butter and take a bite where she left off. After I chew and finish it, I say, “I guess I just wanted to get a little closer to you.”
I lean in to give her a kiss across the table, when there’s a soft thud, the scrabble of paws, then a naughty Siamese cat skidding across the table, hell-bent on our food.
Thor lands right at the edge of the plate, then meows at the top of his lungs and does that cat thing—he freaks the fuck out. Spins around, knocking the plate off the table, leaping in the other direction and racing off, peanut butter and honey in his paws as the plate clatters and breaks.
It all happens so fast that I don’t move. I just look at the remains of the plate on the floor, then Remy, then the broken plate. And we both burst into laughter.
“I guess maybe that was the point of number four for Lacey,” Remy says. “You never know what might happen when you make breakfast together.”
We clean up, and when we’re done with breakfast number two, Remy wipes her hands on a towel, then her gaze lands on her bag, hanging on a chair at the table.
“Wait. There’s something I forgot to show you.
” She hurries to the bag and pulls out her phone.
“I took this picture the other day, and things got crazy.”
She grabs her phone, flicks her finger across the camera roll, and then stops. “It’s a hummingbird,” she says, then shows me the picture. “I saw it the day we came back from Evergreen Falls. It made me think of you.”
She’s always doing things for me. My heart acts up again.
But it’s not just thundering. It’s expanding, and it’s a little uncomfortable.
It tries to take up space that I haven’t allotted for it, and I don’t want to give in to this unexpected expansion.
I don’t want to give in to the way it’s threatening to overtake the other organs, but the heart wants what the heart fucking wants, and it wants her.
This woman who took a hummingbird photo for me, not for the first time, not for the second time, not even for the third time. She’s been sending them to me whenever she sees them. And she did it again.
I stare at the pic as this hazy, heady feeling spreads through my cells.
“That one’s a ruby-throated hummingbird,” I say, my throat feeling tight.
“It’s so pretty,” she says, gazing at the picture.
“Like a jewel,” I say, but I’m staring at her. This woman I want more with.
“You were right. I like hummingbirds,” she says softly.
“Me too,” I say, a rough whisper.
There are other things I want to say, like go out with me, and let’s give this a shot.
But as I’m trying to form those words, she’s busying herself with taking out the list from the bag, then the pouch she keeps it safe in.
She mimes checking number four—make breakfast together and clean it up—off. “And then there were two.”
The mood shifts. It feels somber as I look down at the list and the two remaining items—number three, which is camp under the stars, and then…number five.
And that’s when I know. If I want anything more with her, anything that might feel remotely real, there’s something else I need to do. Something I need to say. Something I’ve held onto for a long, long time.
I didn’t think now would be the moment to say it, but as I’m sitting here with her doing something as pedestrian as having breakfast and cleaning it up, I’m sure there’s no time like the present.
Since this is number five: Share a secret.
I look at the list, then at the woman across from me.
“I wasn’t in love with Heather when she died. We were getting divorced.”