are!” Gran says with a wicked grin. She knows exactly what she’s doing. “I need some help stringing these lights up. I’ve got the ladder set up and did a few, but I’ve got lots more to do. Help an old lady?”
“No,” I say firmly. “I’m doing it for you. Don’t you dare get up that ladder again.”
Gran rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to fall.”
“Said literally every person who fell off a ladder, ever,” I say firmly.
She rolls her eyes at Katie. “Always a bossy one.”
“Tell me about it,” Katie mutters back.
I string up the lights while Katie works with Gran in the kitchen. We’ve tried telling her a dozen times or more that it’s her party and to let us arrange things, but honest to God she likes being busy. She likes doing things. So I let them, even though a part of me feels guilty.
Is it wrong that I’ve introduced them to each other like this? Will it hurt Gran when Katie goes home?
Will it hurt me? Jesus, I don’t want this to end. But how can a guy like me give someone like her what she needs? Have I been lying to myself all these years, telling myself that I don’t want to settle down, that I’m happy alone, and that I enjoy one-night stands and nothing more?
Or was it just that I’d never met the right girl?
That I hadn’t yet met... her.
I tear my gaze from her face, pushing these thoughts from my mind and focus on the task at hand. Lights are strung up in the back, music filters through speakers, and catered food lines tables. Katie and I go to our separate rooms to change quickly just before the first guests arrive.
Everyone I’ve known from childhood comes. Friends and family, neighbors and cousins, filling the large back yard to celebrate Gran.
There’s laughter and music, and the company of friends, as Katie joins me at a little table in the far back under a string of white lights. She wears a pale yellow dress, her hair in curls. She looks so at home here, like she belongs. Gazing at her here in the Georgia sunset makes me long for this again. A simpler life. The comforts of home.
Only this time, there’s a beautiful, brilliant woman who sits by my side and truly enjoys my company, not just the zeroes attached to my name.
“It’s so lovely,” Katie says, her eyes dancing. She frowns. “It’s just… well, sorry to say, but I like it better than your fancy penthouse.”
I chuckle at that, lean over and tickle her side. “Oh you do, do you?”
She giggles. “I do,” she says. “It must get kind of lonely in the penthouse. Doesn’t it?”
Lonely? She has no idea.
I feel myself hardening at the thought of revealing too much, of getting too personal. Katie goes home soon, and I won’t send a part of my heart with her.
Too late, I think. Too fucking late.
“Lonely?” I say with a forced laugh. “In the city that never sleeps? With thousands of people in and out of my hotel every day?”
Katie grows quiet. “You can be lonely in a crowded room.” She sighs. “Ask me how I know.”
I take her hand and give her a little squeeze.
She sighs and rests her head on my shoulder. “Will you tell me why you left?”
A muscle clenches in my jaw, and I open my mouth to tell her, ‘not today.’ But something comes over me, then, and for some reason, maybe because I’m bewitched by the evening or her soft, unpretentious voice, or the fact that I’m home again, I tell her.
“I lost my family in a car accident when I was just eight years old, and Rawley was six. Gran took us in and raised us.”
“Ohh,” she says in a sad voice. “Darius.”
I push on, wanting this to be pragmatic and brief, ignoring the catch in my voice. “She raised us like we were her own. Taught us to work hard, educate ourselves, and how to be real men. But I wanted more than this. I wanted to prove myself. We didn’t have any money, and my dreams and aspirations of playing professional football went to hell when I was injured.”
She listens quietly, and I rub my thumb over the top of her hand. “I still wanted more and to prove myself. So I struck out on my own. And I did.”
“You did,” she says softly. “And you did an amazing job. Look how far you’ve come.”
I