I knew I didn’t have anything here to feed her. “Me, too. Want to get some Chinese?” I asked while playing with her little silver toe ring.
“Can we get takeout?” she asked.
I was all about keeping her to myself. “Sure. I can call and order it and they’ll deliver.”
She didn’t respond right away. She fiddled with her fingernails as if they had her answers. “Are you going to take me home tonight?” she asked, then glanced up at me.
“I was waiting until I fed you and buttered you up with a fortune cookie before I brought this up, but I want you to stay here tonight. I don’t want to take you back to Nan’s.”
She let out a breath and smiled. “Good. I don’t think I’m ready to walk back into that just yet. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
I took her ankle and pulled her closer to me, making her squeal in surprise. “I’m all about keeping you here all the time. But tomorrow morning I have to do some work before I get fired. You don’t have to leave. You can stay right here. I just need to catch up on some things. Then I have a board meeting at the club at four.”
She scrunched her nose. “I didn’t think about how I was keeping you from work. I’ll leave in the morning. I have tennis anyway.”
Tennis.
I hated f**king tennis.
“I can be more fun than tennis,” I told her, crawling on top of her.
“Is this about Adam?” she asked, grinning up at me.
“Hell yeah, it is.”
Harlow laughed and shoved at my chest. “I don’t want Adam. I think I made that clear today. And yesterday, a few times.”
She had a point. But I wanted Adam to know it. “Okay, fine. Go to tennis, but if I come to watch while I work, don’t get pissed.”
Her eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t do that.”
I bent down to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Yes, sweet girl, I would.”
Harlow
It was three days later before I went back to Nan’s. Grant convinced me to come back to his place every evening. When he wasn’t working, he was with me, and sometimes when he was working he was with me. Like during tennis every day. Grant sat on the porch that wrapped around the main clubhouse. He drank coffee and worked on his laptop.
Adam got the hint. He would’ve been an idiot not to. Grant made it very clear, going so far as walking me to the gate and kissing me until I lost my breath before sending me to each session.
Today, however, I had to go back to Nan’s. I couldn’t move in with Grant. We had to get over this hurdle with Nan. This was my house, too. I also wanted to talk to Mase without Grant around so I had privacy if Mase wanted to ask me about Grant.
When Grant got a call to drive two hours south to check out a site for his dad, he wanted me to go with him. But I needed some space to think. I felt like we’d gone from taking things fast to super overdrive. My heart was having a hard time keeping up.
I knew the moment I’d given myself to Grant that I had deep feelings for him. Then he’d destroyed them. I had thought it would take a long time for those feelings to come back, or even resurface. But I was finding out how wrong I was. They were coming back hard.
•
While watching Grant brush his teeth this morning as I shaved my legs, I realized that this felt right. It was easy. And it scared me. He was making me picture a future for us. But what kind of future could I give him? Not the one I’m sure he always wanted. He wasn’t in love with me. Falling into the daily everyday details of life with him was dangerous. Before, I was worried about getting hurt. Now, I knew I was going to get hurt. It had gone too far.
And I didn’t know what to do about it.
I was hoping Mase had some wisdom to share.
Nan’s car was gone when I pulled up to the house, and I breathed a sigh of relief. This was good. Maybe she was gone on one of her trips. I headed inside and stopped by the kitchen to get myself a bottle of water before going up to my room.
My room was just like I left it. Nan must have told the house cleaner not to go into my room. Not that I cared. I didn’t have a messy room, just an unmade bed. I set my water down on the table and sat down.
Mase answered his phone on the second ring.