“I feel like I’m getting access to some kind of secret cheat code.”
“Love how genuine affection is considered cheating.”
“No, I mean . . .”
“I know what you meant,” she says softly. “But really, it’s not much of a secret. That’s all anyone wants, right? For someone to love them genuinely and honestly?”
“Bianca, I . . .” He starts, and his stupid fucking mouth, he’s just gonna fucking say it and he’ll regret it for the rest of his life, he knows it. Her eyes are wide and . . . is that panic he sees? Or . . . something else, excitement? Fuck it, might as well just . . . “I—”
“We’re home!” Erik says, bursting through the door, pulling two suitcases behind him.
“Shh!” Adam hushes him.
“Uh,” Bianca says, staring at them, her eyes flickering to Xavier for a second before focusing back on her friends, “what are you guys doing here?”
Chapter 14
“We couldn’t stand the idea of being away from them overnight,” Erik admits, but Bianca is barely listening to him.
All she wants to do is kick Erik and Adam back out of their own house, lock the door behind them and make Xavier finish whatever he was going to say because . . . because holy shit, whatever the fuck he was going to say, it was going to be important. She could feel the air shift around them, saw it in the set of his shoulders and the firmness in his voice.
Whatever he was going to say might have changed her life.
If he’d just been given the chance to say it.
But the moment’s gone, no matter how much she wants it back.
And does sheactuallyeven want it back?
Because whatever life-changing thing he was going to say or ask or confess, whatever words were going to spill off his tongue, that wouldn’t change what she knows to be true.
That he’s leaving and probably never coming back.
But . . . maybe . . . what if . . . she could go with him?
And being with him, at least for a little while, would be incredible.
That’s crazy though, isn’t it? Her life is here. She wouldn’t have to give anything up for it; it would just be like this, for a little longer. And he won’t ask for anything that she can’t give.
Right now, there’s nothing holding her here – no job, no path, just . . . time. What if she packed up Amelia and went to Greece? What if she just worked on getting her thesis into publishing shape and turned it into a book? What if he spent his days chasing his dream while she writes her way closer to hers and . . .
“Are you guys watchingRobin Hood?” Adam asks, cutting into her thought spiral, as Erik just slides past them toward the back of the house and the babies’ room.
“Oh,” Bianca says, “yeah.” She reaches for the remote and shuts off the TV. “We’ll just get going then?”
Adam laughs and rolls his eyes. “Thanks for doing this. Dinner’s on us next time.”
“Please, it was such a pleasure, they were perfect.”
“Night, guys, get home safe,” he says, walking them out the door.
Tense silence reigns in the car and neither one of them seems interested in breaking it. Bianca has no idea what to say, no idea if she wants to forget the conversation ever happened or just ask him, ask him what he was about to say, because it couldn’tpossiblybe what her wild imagination assumed.
There’s no way.
But then, the way he’d been looking at her. The depth of his gaze, the tightness in his jaw, the way he’d eased into her space, not crowding her, but . . . leaning . . . and she wanted it, accepted it, returned it and now . . . what the hell is she supposed to do?
The drive back across town has never been so fast, LA traffic conspiring to get her out of the car as quickly as possible, but that just creates another problem.
