30. Chapter 30
thirty
It took some more dance moves and lip syncing, but we eventually slid the flans into the waiting oven.
Technically, once the flans were done, they should cool and chill overnight, so I wasn’t really needed anymore, but I didn’t have to tell him yet.
I could be useful in helping to determine when they were done without being burnt, so I’d take whatever excuse I could to spend more time with him.
Even if it meant having the talk.
Which, let the record show, Max wasted no time in jumping into. The second I straightened from shutting the oven door, he grabbed my hands in his.
His eyes flicked over me in earnest to gauge my reaction, and his voice was tentative when he spoke. “Can we sit?”
I only nodded, since my voice fled the premises the second our hands connected.
He led me to the couch, where we sat facing each other. There was minimal groaning from me, which, considering how my body felt like I’d been flattened under a cosmic rolling pin after paintballing yesterday, was quite the accomplishment, thank you very much.
With a small smile, Max passed the bodice-ripping book to me.
What the nuts and cheese ? Did I read him wrong and we weren’t going to have the talk about the-kiss-that-shall-not-be-named? This seemed like an exceptionally weird time for some light reading.
He laughed and gestured toward the book. “It’s to give you something to fidget with. I’ve noticed you need an outlet for your energy whenever you’re nervous, and based on the way you looked like I was leading you to your death on the way over, I’d say this qualifies as one of those times.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be embarrassed or touched. Or terrified because he could read me easier than the book my fingers were already nervously tapping against. What all had I given away about my feelings for him?
“Thank you,” I finally managed to squeak out.
His smile slowly faded into a frown so profound his dimples popped. His brow wrinkled in concern, and he clasped his hands tightly in his lap. “Dekker, I owe you both an apology and an explanation for running out like I did Wednesday night.”
I shook my head, unable to meet his eye. “You don’t owe me anything, Max. It’s fine. I was the one—”
“It’s not fine.” He argued, soft yet firm. “It’s not fine, because I know what it looked like, and I can guess how it made you feel. Especially since I didn’t leave for the reasons you might be assuming.”
I huffed softly and fanned the book’s pages with my thumb. “You mean when you told me you regretted kissing me?”
“I don’t regret kissing you.” He chuckled, a low, husky sound that sent a zip of electricity across my skin. “As much as I panicked at the time, I don’t think I could ever regret something like that.”
My brow furrowed. That wasn’t at all what it had sounded like to me. And how else was I supposed to interpret what he said? For a brain so proficient in jumping to a thousand different conclusions all at once, it was unusually silent on this matter.
“Dekker, you terrified me.” At my gobsmacked look, he bit back a smile.
“I’d never felt so much all at once before, and it scared the crap out of me.
” He shifted position and rested his arm across the back of the couch, his smile hesitant.
Sheepish, almost. “I’d never… wanted someone so badly, and certainly not on so many levels.
Between that and my stupid dating sabbatical, it was a lot of consequences to think about at the same time, and with you within three feet of me, thinking wasn’t going to happen. ”
I blinked twice, so hard I hoped I could force a reboot for my brain. While his words made sense on their own, putting them together the way he did—talking about me that way—did not compute. He wanted me —the human equivalent of a feral platypus in an apron? He wanted me ?
Error 404. Logic not found.
“I think I ran, like, five miles just trying to cool down and think things through,” he admitted, grimacing. “And then I had to catch my flight and… yeah. Not my finest moment.”
“It’s not like I have any room to judge in that arena,” I teased, hesitant to let the flurry tornadoing in my chest grow into anything concrete. “I feel like I haven’t had a fine moment the entire time we’ve been neighbors.”
He snorted a laugh, so explosive and unexpected that I finally understood why he enjoyed my own. “If that’s the case, I don’t think I’d stand a chance against you in your finest moments.”
I hadn’t the foggiest idea what that was supposed to mean, since having a day where I wasn’t awkward wouldn’t suddenly make me six feet tall and able to bench-press a horse, but it was kind of him to think so. “Thanks? I think.”
He cocked his head, his smile nearly as soft as his eyes. “Do you remember the day we met?”
“How could I forget?”
Believe me, I’ve tried. It sure would’ve made the last year a lot less stressful if I’d succeeded.
“It’s actually one of my favorite days.”
“ What ?” I blurted, so taken aback I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to filter my reaction. “How on earth could that be one of your favorite days? Your fiancée broke your heart because of me.”
He watched me for a few seconds, the only sounds the rumble of his fridge’s ice dispenser and muted voices and footsteps as other tenants passed by his door. It was unnerving, honestly, the way he could look at me and see my soul.
Finally, he asked, “Did you hear all of what Vicky said when she broke up with me?”
I shrugged one shoulder. While my ears had heard everything, I’d been so preoccupied with trying to escape the room and freaking out about what was going down that precious little truly registered. At least, not enough to remember now. “Most of it.”
“She said that, in all our years as a couple, she’d never once looked at me the way you looked at me.
We’d never laughed and joked the way you and I did.
” He took a bracing breath, his powerful rib cage expanding with the motion.
“She’d developed feelings for a coworker, even though she hadn’t intended to.
It started off completely platonic. But she realized what she saw between you and me that day was what she and that coworker had.
And she wanted that for the rest of her life. ”
Vicky did what ? When she already had Max? The very possibility blew my mind to smithereens. Why would someone want anyone else when he exists?
He smiled. Not quite melancholy, not quite happy.
Content . That seemed like the best word for the curve of his lips and the slight crinkle of the skin by his eyes.
“Not the kind of relationship we had at the time—comfortable, and nothing else. So she made the call I couldn’t even see had to be made. And you helped her see that.”
Putting this spin on the day that would live forever in infamy in my head felt like trying to walk after taking a ride on the KitchenAid’s paddle.
I knew what the picture was supposed to look like but getting it into focus— accepting it—wouldn’t happen immediately.
It would take some time, maybe some wooziness while I was at it.
For the first time, though, I believed it would happen.
There were no shortage of things I’ve done wrong, but maybe I could finally let this particular one go.
“But that isn’t why it’s one of my favorite days,” he continued, one corner of his mouth lifting higher to lend a roguish quality to his smile. “It’s one of my favorite days because I met you. No matter the circumstances.”
My jaw dropped. My mind went blessedly blank for one second. Nothing but white noise. “I’m sorry?”
He chuckled and shifted the tiniest bit closer.
“Do you have any idea how hard it has been to resist you since you moved in? First I chalked it up to curiosity, especially since I found you hiding from me that first day. Then I told myself I had to show there wasn’t any ill will toward you once I found out you thought I’d been plotting revenge. ”
I cringed and hid my face behind the book. “I’m not sure which one to be more embarrassed about.”
“How about neither?” He lowered the book until our eyes met, his face achingly close to mine. “They brought you closer to me, didn’t they? So as far as I’m concerned, they aren’t embarrassing. They just are .” His eyes lit with mischief. “And they make for an excellent story.”
I pushed him playfully. “For you, maybe.”
He winced as soon as my hand touched his chest, but he didn’t scoot back to his corner of the couch.
I froze as I remembered how badly he’d been battered with paintballs yesterday.
I impulsively stretched his shirt collar down to see where I’d touched him, only to find a smattering of purplish-blue bruises in radial patterns where each paintball had hit.
As bad as my bruises were, his blew them out of the water.
I could only imagine how much more noticeable they’d be on my pale skin compared to his.
“Max!” I gaped, eyes wide as I finally let his shirt collar go. “Did you ice these?”
He grimaced. “Does going out for drinks with the guys after paintball count as icing it?”
I was already on my way to his freezer. Surely he had something that would help. Not that I was convinced icing bruises made much of a difference, but I couldn’t do nothing while he was in pain.
After taking a mental note of the ice cream flavors he had, I found a bag of frozen fruit that could work for an ice pack. When I turned from closing the freezer, I nearly barreled into his chest.
“ Holy ham hocks , Max,” I breathed, clutching at my heart before passing him the berries. I hadn’t even heard him stand, and yet he’d already made it to the kitchen. “For such a big guy, you’re really light on your feet.”
“All the practice you give me, keeping me on my toes, I’m sure.” He reluctantly held the fruit bag to his chest, flinching again from the pressure it put on his bruises. “They really showed no mercy yesterday.”
I gave an awkward laugh. As much as I doubted Hattie and Annie would hold back regardless, I couldn’t help thinking our girls’ night discussion might have heightened their aggression.
“Uh, nope. No mercy. Anyway” —I rushed into a topic change before he could read the guilt on my face— “you were saying something about how irresistible I am? My social graces and cunning wit, I think?”
“Something like that.” He grinned, then looked down at the fruit he held to his chest. His expression turned thoughtful, his smile fading and his eyebrows pulling together. “You know, I think I like being taken care of, as long as it’s you.”
“I like taking care of you,” I murmured.
Besides feeding him and making him hold frozen produce to his battle wounds, I wasn’t sure I had much to offer him.
But maybe relationships weren’t about what you could bring to the table, anyway.
Maybe they were about choosing your person and then choosing them over and over again because that’s what love was, in the end. It was choosing.
“Then it appears we’re at an impasse” —his eyes sparkled like sugar crystals as he tucked an errant curl behind my ear— “because I like taking care of you, too.”
I breathed him in, drank in the snapshot of the moment exactly as it was. “How about we meet each other where they are? Some days I’ll have a bum ankle, and you’ll literally carry my weight.”
He chuckled at this, his hand lingering to caress my face.
“And others,” I continued, “you’ll have battle scars that need tending to and I’ll get to fuss over you.
Or maybe you’ll have a hard day at work, and I’ll be here for you through that, too.
” I shrugged, attempting to play off the depth of my devotion for fear of scaring him off. “I’m only a wall away.”
His thumb rubbed gentle circles against my cheek as he cupped my jaw, his expression intense yet unreadable. When he finally spoke, he looked over his shoulder toward the flower print hanging on his wall. “My mom has a massive flower garden, but hydrangeas are her favorite.”
I fought to keep my expression neutral. Considering how many random topic changes I had sprung on him, it only seemed fair that he could do the same every now and then.
“She’d tell us all the time about how the soil the hydrangeas are planted in will determine their coloring when they blossom. Cultivate good soil, and you’ll get the flowers you want.” He smiled and finally retracted his hand. “I want good soil for us. I want to do this the right way.”
I frowned. My soul wanted to take flight at his words, but I had no idea what he actually meant. “Do what right?”
“Us.” He laughed. “At risk of sounding like the duke in that book, I want to court you, Dekker. If you’ll let me, that is. I want to see what grows.”
Holy jalapeno poppers . Did I slip into a coma in the past hour or so? There was no way this could be happening. And yet, here we were.
Rather than the enthusiastic yes! threatening to burst out of me, what came out instead was a quiet, “Does this mean you figured out what love is?”
He set the fruit on the counter and moved closer to wrap his arms around me. And, boy, howdy, did that feel like the physical manifestation of a symphony’s chill-inducing crescendo.
He smiled faintly, letting down the spears of nonchalance guarding his soul until I could glimpse it in all its glory. “I think I’m starting to.”
“In that case,” I managed to say around my heart, which had decided to lodge itself in my windpipe, “I accept. Wholeheartedly. Court away, Max.” I stood on my tiptoes to get closer to his ear and whispered, “Now put your fruit back on.”