last time I’d been in here. “Are you repainting the whole space?” I asked when my eyes made their way back to hers.
Cammi nodded, brushing a loose lock of hair away from her forehead with the back of her wrist. “One wall a night. I figure that’s all I can get done at once.”
We faced each other, and my pulse kept on humming while need tightened every fiber in my body. God, I wanted to kiss her.
“How does it feel to own this place now?” I forced myself to focus on anything but the feel of her lips underneath mine.
Her eyes did a quick arc around the café. When they landed back on me, she shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. I never expected this to happen, and now it’s here.”
“I missed you.” I abruptly changed the subject without planning on it. My feelings apparently decided they needed to be heard.
She looked at me quietly, and a sense of burgeoning filled the air. Her cheeks went a little pink and her lips kicked up at one corner. “I missed you too. I was going to call you.”
Needing to make sure she knew I wasn’t pressuring her, I added, “I wasn’t saying that so you would. You can still have the space you need, but I was hoping I could let you know something.”
She was quiet for several echoing beats of my heart, and I started to wonder if I was barreling forward to quickly. “Hey, I didn’t mean—”
Cammi shook her head, and I quieted immediately. “I was just trying to figure out how to say what I wanted to say,” she began. “I miss you. My freak out was more about not trusting myself than not trusting you. I know you’re a good man, and I know you weren’t hiding anything from me. I’m sorry I kind of…” She circled her hand in the air before dropping it. “Freaked out. It’s also kind of took me by surprise.”
Joy was spinning inside the lust she always elicited. “I took you by surprise?”
“Well, you were all, you know, kind of grumpy and distant as long as I knew you. We never talked about what was happening, or what we were to each other. I didn’t want to make any assumptions. Things happened fast, but then, I already knew you.”
I took a step to close the distance between us, reaching for her hands. God, it felt good to touch her again, just to have that link of contact. “So that explains it. I already knew you.”
“Yeah,” she said slowly as if I was missing something. “What do you mean that explains it?”
“That explains why I fell in love with you. It didn’t happen that fast. It happened in slow-motion, and then my heart finally got the memo and caught up real quick.”
Her cheeks went bright pink, and her mouth dropped open as her eyes went wide. “Do you, you—” she sputtered before she shook her head and snapped her mouth shut.
“I’m just telling you how I feel. Rumor has it I might’ve been a little slow on the ball with that. I know the whole thing with my ex-girlfriend—”
This time, it was Cammi who shook her head. She freed one of her hands from mine to place her finger over my lips. “You didn’t do anything wrong with that. If I hadn’t had such a weird, fucked up thing happen in my last relationship—if I can even call it that—I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did. Is everything okay with that, by the way?”
She finally dropped her hand, and I immediately caught it in mine again as I nodded. “It’s fine.” If I had it my way, I’d never let her go. There was the inconvenient fact that life didn’t make it possible for me to hold onto her all the time, but I would take what I could get.
Her pretty blue eyes searched mine and then she leaned up and pressed a kiss just under the edge of my jaw. When she pulled away, she said, “I guess I’ve been falling for you too and I just didn’t know it.” She swallowed and took a fast breath. “Actually, I love you.”
My heart gave a rounding kick, and I moved to pull her closer, but she gave her head a little shake. “There’s one more thing.” Her brow creased, and she blinked a few times, looking suddenly nervous.
“What is it?”
“I want to have kids.” Her words came out in a rush. She took