She also needed me. And the little reminder of that has me smiling again.
“What?” she asks, before taking another mouthful and narrowing her eyes at me, a lot more relaxed than earlier. I coast my eyes across her beautiful face, the freckles under her eye, thelittle curls that have escaped her bandanna, and plumpness of those lips as she chews, my heart beating heavily in my chest.
“Nothing.” I smile, taking the last mouthful of my bowl.
“Um, so…I’m sorry if I pulled you away from work. And I appreciate you coming over…I feel a bit ridiculous, to be honest,” she says into her bowl, not looking up at me as she pushes the rest of the cereal around, a little color hitting her cheeks, which is a nice difference from the pale disparity she wore earlier.
“You don’t need to thank me, Rosie. I’ll always come when you call.” She still won’t meet my eyes, and when she clears her throat, I feel the sudden loss like she’s slipping through my fingers.
“Look, Caleb?—”
“Wait, don’t say anything,” I rush on, really not ready for her to push me away—not when we’re finally at a point where she’s let me in. Even if it’s not all the way, I’ll take it. I put my bowl down and take hers before moving closer, her face in my palms, and I swipe at a lone tear. My sad little Rosebud.
“I don’t want to go back, Rosie. I really don’t. I don’t want to go back to trysts in secret. To just scratching the itch and using each other. If I’m being honest, I haven’t beenusingyou for a long time.” Her eyes switch frantically between mine even as her brows crease and she pulls my hands from her face, backing away slightly from me. I hate that she retracts, but I don’t let it stop me. Because I’m done pretending and shoving down everything that I want. I’m done letting the useless voice in my head that tells me I’m not worthy control every decision I make when it comes to her. She called me, she needed me, and I reacted without thought, and I got to hold her in my arms. So right now, I’m reacting without thought too.
“I want you. For real. I don’t want to hide and I definitely don’t want to share you with anyone else. I know you haven’t answered me when I asked you the first time, and I told myselfthat it was fine, that I’d just take you any way you’d let me, and look, you could say hell no and I’d probably still come crawling back. But I need us to be on the same page.” I huff a steadying breath. “It hurts, being a secret. I hate not being able to touch you or kiss you, or hell, barely look at you when we’re in public. And I’m not saying this out of some territorial rage, I’m saying it because I wantyou.I want to be with you. I want you to be mine and I want to be yours. Not because of your last name, not because of your success. I want you because you consume my every thought, because when I sleep, you’re there in my dreams. When I hear your laugh, the real one, it calls to me like a goddamn siren’s song and I never want it to end. The smile you give me when it’s just us makes me almost feral. They are all the things I want too. All your laughs and all your smiles, I want to know that they’re mine and no one else’s. And your tears, Rosebud? If you’re going to shed them, I want them too. I want to hold you and I want to hurt whoever hurts you. I want to celebrate you and cheer you on and, dammit, I don’t want to do it behind closed doors anymore. Rosie, I?—”
“Okay,” she breathes, and then a watery laugh breaks into a reluctant smile as she swipes at her cheeks. My breath stills in my lungs as she stampedes over my stupid, lust-filled speech.
“Okay?” I breathe back, just making sure I heard that right.
She smiles shyly and I feel my own light up my face. “Okay.” Her shoulders drop. “We…we can tell our friends, and we’ll be exclusive.” She laughs nervously, and I jump to standing, shouting a “Yes” before laughing and raking my hands through my hair. I spin and go back to her, taking her hands and looping them around my neck, claiming her lips in a searing kiss. She kneels on the bed, her body pressed against mine as I stand to the side, my hands trailing her back, finding her ass in an overeager squeeze and claiming her lips with ferocity. When shemoans and presses her body firmly against mine, I pull back again.
“You mean it?” I feel like a kid on fucking Christmas right now. “You’re truly mine? I get to call you my girl?” I rake my bottom lip through my teeth as the thought of Rosie Garcia beingmygirl sends a thrill of excitement through my whole body and straight to my fucking cock. I go in for a kiss but she pulls back, a hand pressed to my chest, and my heart stops. She’s shaking her head.
“No, Caleb.”
“No?”What!?
“I…we…can’t.” She backs away, sitting on the bed, and I take a step back from her, my hands on my hips, trying to shake my brain free from the whiplash right now. “We can tell our friends that we’re sleeping together and we can be exclusive, but I can’t give you anything else.” When I tilt my head in confusion, she sighs, running a hand over her tired face and then locking her determination back on me. “This isn’t forever, I can’t promise you anything and I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to lead you on because I care…” She stutters to a stop and then takes a breath before she looks at her hands. “I care about you, Caleb. But I can’t be your anything, and I can’t make you any promises. That’s not for us, remember?” She looks up at me, her eyes pleading, and I know that I’ll cave. The moment she hits me with her big brown eyes, I’m putty in her hands. “When this started, we agreed, we don’t do the L word, we don’t do strings and forevers.”
I search her face for the reason. She’s not saying no, she’s saying shecan’t,like there is an invisible wall between us that is physically stopping her from taking what she wants. And I know she wants the same things I do, I just can’t work out how to get her to leap with me. But this is something, right? It’s more. It’s knowing that she will be in my bed and no one else’s. It meansI can kiss her when we’re out at the bar with our friends, and I can take her home without sneaking away. It’s progress, and I’ve never taken no for an answer, I’ve never let a hard sell scare me away. If there is one thing I’m fantastic at, it’s closing. And now I have the best motivator out there: calling Rosie mine.
Yeah, I like the sound of that.
“Okay,” I say, and she sighs. I climb on the bed next to her and let her fall against my shoulder again. The heat gone from before, and though my enthusiasm may have taken a hit, my determination is as strong as ever. “I care about you, too, Rosie, and I’m not taking back any of what I said. You know where I stand, and I know where you stand. And I’ll take anything you give me. I’m not going anywhere.” She pulls back to look into my eyes, and whatever she finds, it seems to satisfy her, her head landing back on my shoulder as she heaves a sigh.
The conversation eases from there, and she falls dramatically back to the bed when I ask her what her plan is now for her job.
“I don’t know. My father might have taken away my job, but my pay slip was always all mine and I made sure to keep it separate from my daddy fund. He can’t touch what I have and I have a little until things become desperate. Besides, I don’t think he’s financially cut me off yet, so maybe I’ll just rack up some credit card bills as a big fuck you.” She laughs but it’s an empty sound. I hum in agreement. It’s only been a few hours, so I’m not going to push her harder than she needs right now. “I think I just want to sulk for a couple days. Then I’ll go out and do what I do best.” She sighs and then sits up on her elbows, her playful smile in place, and I can’t help but reflect it back at her.
“And what’s that?” I sit forward and she does the same, our faces inches apart, and I let my thumb lightly dust the skin of her chin, pulling her bottom lip out from where she bites it.
“Go out there and show them all who’s boss.”
“Atta girl,” I whisper across her lips and then press a soft kiss to them. I feel her smile against me as she kisses me back, and warmth spreads through my stomach.
“But right now,” she says, breaking the kiss and then kissing me again, “it’s my birthday, so I kind of just want to veg out.”
“It’s your birthday!?” I pull back, alarmed. Her fucking birthday!? How did I not know this?
“Uh, yeah?” She giggles, looking puzzled at my face.
“Why didn’t you tell me!? And we’re just sitting in here? You…Ah fuck.” I run a hand down my face. “Rosie, I’m so sorry this happened on your birthday.” I try to pull her into my arms, but she reacts faster and pushes against my shoulders until I’m on my back on her bed and she climbs on top of me, straddling my hips. Yeah, I like her idea better.
“Don’t be. And I don’t really want to talk about it anymore. Let’s do something else.”
“What did you have in mind?” I ask, a little distracted, my hands smoothing down her soft thighs, happy to see her spark returning, though I feel like a bag of shit that I didn’t know it was her birthday and I haven’t got her anything.
