Chapter 24 Evie
EVIE
Afew weeks have passed since Cato’s party and our run-in with Tanner. My lawyer got word that he agreed to mediation, and since I’m not asking for anything besides a few personal belongings, my lawyer thinks it should be “quick and painless.”
I’ve been going to work normally, taking care of my cases during the day, and still working a few shifts at the diner at night.
Each time I do, Keaton shows up at the start of my shift and sits at the counter until I’m done.
He says he doesn’t like sleeping without me, and if I’m being honest, I love it.
Sometimes he brings Julian and Sawyer. Brooks has come once and has since claimed he will be back for the pancakes.
It’s nice to have people.
I walk around, taking orders for the shift workers who come in for their late-night meals, and all the while, I feel his eyes on me, keeping tabs on me. It feels protective, but it also just feels like love.
Like he wants to be here.
I walk by him again as he stares up at the television, but as I brush by him, I feel his hand graze my ass. I turn back to him and give him a knowing look.
“Watch it, sir,” I tell him. “My boyfriend is the jealous type.”
As soon as I say the words, I freeze. My eyes go wide, and I stare back at him. I cannot believe I just fucking said that.
But he doesn’t look scared or uncomfortable. He looks amused.
“Boyfriend, huh?” he asks. He leans back against the bar, and if I wasn’t so fucking embarrassed right now, I’d be so fucking turned on.
Because God, the way he looks right now…
One arm up on the counter. Shaggy, perfect sandy locks tousled about.
Muscles bulging from his tight t-shirt. And that look in his eyes…
like he’s starving, and I am what he’s hungry for.
I don’t answer him, because I don’t know what to say.
That devilish smile stays on his face as he pushes himself to stand, walking toward me.
“Well, I guess now is as good of a time as any,” he says, “now that I know it’s official.”
I swallow.
“A good time for what?”
“For me to ask my girlfriend to move in with me—officially,” he says. I stare back up at him. I don’t say anything. I just blink like an idiot. He chuckles and takes my hand.
The crazy thing is, I hadn’t even thought about my living arrangements after Tanner.
I’ve been so lost in all the changes, so lost in Keaton, that I hadn’t even considered what my next move would be.
Maybe because I’m not really interested in any moves after Keaton. He’s the only move I want to make.
“Keat, are you…are you sure?” I mumble. “It’s only been… I can find somewhere else, and we can… I’m sorry. I should have brought this up before. I don’t want you to think that I just expected—”
He cuts me off with a long, beautiful kiss. When we come apart, he holds my face in his hands.
“I have waited long enough for you, Evie Dawson,” he says.
“Don’t make me wait any longer. I meant what I said.
Whatever is mine is yours. You are the only part about this city that makes it feel like home to me.
And if here isn’t home for you anymore, just tell me where it is, and I will follow you there. ”
I blink back tears.
The old Evie would fight him on it, would want to make sure he knew I wasn’t expecting anything, that if he wanted to take things slow and casual, that that would be okay.
But the new Evie, the real Evie, knows that she’s waited long enough for someone to see her the way that she should have seen herself.
The real Evie knows that the man in front of her has loved her for years, better than anyone ever has, and better than anyone else ever could.
I wrap my hands around his wrists and smile through my tears.
“Then let’s not waste any more time,” I choke out. He smiles and kisses me again.
A few more days have passed, and I am quietly humming to myself in the study of his—our—apartment. He hired movers to bring back a few boxes of things from the house I shared with Tanner. Tanner was there, but he didn’t put up a fight.
Finding places for my things here with Keaton has been so freeing, so healing, like a lesson in bringing some parts of the past to the future with me without letting them taint it.
Keaton keeps telling me to “put whatever you want wherever you want it.” He says that this apartment never felt like his until I stepped foot inside it.
He also told me that if I ever bring up paying for anything here again, he will take me over his knee like he did in the pool house that night.
I’ve been tempted several times.
When we were kids, I never let myself become comfortable with his money. I’d run ahead of him at the fair so I could pay my own way before he could. I’d buy my own food from the food trucks by our school. I’d do anything I could to prove to him that I didn’t care about it.
Because I didn’t.
I didn’t picture life with him in a castle somewhere far, far away.
I just pictured him.
But it’s different now. Because I actually do live in a sort of castle with him.
And he is adamant that it’s ours.
I’m unpacking some of my books onto his massive built-in bookshelves when I feel someone pinch my sides. I shriek and stumble off the ladder, right into his arms. He kisses me hard, and I let my hands roam his hair while he spins us around slowly.
“Hi,” I say when we finally come apart.
“Hi, you,” he says, holding his forehead to mine. We stand like this for a few moments, and I feel his grip on me tighten.
“What is it?” I whisper.
I love how in sync we are.
“Another one of the victims…survivors?” he catches himself. “I don’t know what to call them. But another one of the women wants to come in and talk to us.”
I sigh as he sets me down on the ground.
“I feel like a selfish bastard because my first thought was, ‘I can’t do this.’ Imagine that. Imagine the bullshit they’ve been through because of my father, and my first instinct is to bitch about having to hear about it.”
I take his hand and lead him toward the giant window seat.
“Keat,” I tell him, holding his hand, “it’s okay that you don’t want to hear about it.
You didn’t do this. Cato did. And he is the one who should be bearing the brunt of this.
But since it can’t be him yet, you and Julian…
you don’t know how freeing this could be for these women.
Just feeling like someone gives a shit—someone who can actually do something about it.
I love you for that, Keat. I hate that you’re going through this, but I love that you are that someone for them.
Just like you always have been with me.”
He looks up at me, raising an eyebrow.
Then his lips curl up into that smile that makes me squeeze my legs together.
“Did you just tell me you love me, Dawson?” he asks.
I roll my lips together, butterflies zooming around my stomach.
He leans back against the window, our fingers still interlocked.
The old Evie would second-guess it. She would worry about how it may be taken.
That she was coming on too strong, that she was too much, that she didn’t deserve to get to share how she felt.
But not this Evie.
Not his Evie.
I stand up and step between his knees. I take his face in my hands, looking down at him and stroking his cheeks with my thumbs as I stare into those gray eyes.
“Yeah,” I whisper, “I said that I love you, Keaton. Because I do. You are so, so loved. And when this is all over, if we need to go live in an apartment like Nanny’s, I’d happily share a twin bed with you every day…
as long as it’s you. You deserve so much love, Keat. And I’m going to give it to you.”
He smiles up at me, and I see his eyes getting glassy.
Oh, god.
I don’t know if I can handle a crying Keaton. But he doesn’t break fully. I see him swallow back the tears, reaching one hand up to cup my cheek. He wraps his hand around my head and pulls me down for a long, slow kiss.
“You always gave me love, baby,” he says.
“You just didn’t realize it.” He kisses me again, long and hard.
I curl up against him on the seat, and it feels so fucking good.
It feels like everything I went through with Tanner, and my family, all the love I was missing, was worth going through for just this tiny moment right here and any others that I get to have with him.
The way he looks at me. The little smiles he is constantly flashing in my direction.
The way he thinks about my every move. The way he cherishes the time we spend together.
Like he adores me.
Like I don’t have to earn it.
“Eve?” he asks me after a few minutes of blissful silence.
“Hmm?”
“Will you come with me?” he asks. I turn my head up to meet his gaze.
“Of course,” I tell him. I don’t know if I can handle it either, but I know that I’m going to try.