Take the Chance (Top Shelf Romance #9) - Brittainy Cherry Page 0,140

To outrun it, maybe.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Yeah, I do. I don’t have much family left. Dad remarried and now they live in Idaho. Patty—his wife—has her family there, so I never see my dad. Birthday cards and the occasional phone call.”

He glanced at me, took in my darkened expression. “Hey, sorry for dumping all that about my mom on you. I don’t normally talk about my shit. Not to anyone.”

“I’m glad you told me,” I said, smiling faintly. “I’m glad you feel like you can.”

“It’s not a pretty story.”

“Not many people’s are, I think.”

“What about you?” he asked. “I don’t mean you have to tell me your not-so-pretty story, if you have one. I meant, you mentioned you had a sister?”

“One sister, back in Queens,” I said. “She’s older. And married. Perfect husband, perfect house, perfect everything.”

“And you didn’t get the perfect gene?” Sawyer asked lightly.

“Oh no, I’m the fuck-up,” I said.

Sawyer frowned. “You don’t seem like a fuck-up to me.”

If you only knew.

“My sister went to college, I didn’t. She pursued a ‘real career’ in interior design. I didn’t. I wanted to be a dancer, which everyone knows is no way to make a living. So speaketh my parents, away.”

“Is that why you moved out here? To do your own thing?”

“Yes,” I said. “A fresh start.”

He nodded. Smiled. “Fresh starts are good. Emmett makes one every day,” he said. “Once I get this clerkship, if I get this clerkship, I’ll have one too.”

“You will get it,” I said. “You’ll pass the bar. Your brother isn’t the only one with the genius IQ.”

Sawyer waved a hand. “Nah. He’s the real deal.”

“But you have a photographic memory, right?” I blew air out my cheeks with a laugh. “I can hardly remember what I wore yesterday.”

“You wore jean shorts over ripped black tights, and a black, satiny-type blouse with gold flowers and skulls on it,” Sawyer said. “And combat boots.”

I stared, a blush creeping up my cheeks. “How do you know that?”

“I was getting off the Muni last night when you were getting on. You didn’t see me.”

“I was on my way to rehearsal,” I said automatically.

And an NA meeting after that.

But that part I kept to myself. I wanted to put as much distance between myself and the kind of person he imagined an addict could be. I cleared my throat.

“Okay, Mega-mind, what did I wear when I babysat for Olivia on the fly?”

“You wore black leggings, a long white shirt. And combat boots.”

“What was I wearing the day we met?”

“A beige skirt—linen, maybe—with a men’s jean button down shirt, and maroon socks pulled up to your knees.” He grinned. “And combat boots.”

“God, hearing it like that, I sound like a slob.”

“You don’t look like a slob,” he said quickly, his gaze intent. “You look like you. I’ve never met anyone who looks and acts and dresses one hundred percent like themselves.”

My blush deepened. “Thanks.”

The moment caught and held, and the entire city went silent. I could hardly blink, I wanted to hold on to every second of that moment. The way the sun glinted off the burnished gold of his hair, and how his dark brown eyes were looking at me.

Olivia stirred in her sleep.

“She got up super early this morning,” Sawyer said, “which means I got up super early this morning. I should get back.”

“Yeah, me too. I have rehearsal.”

We packed up the mini-picnic, and Sawyer gently laid his daughter in the stroller. We walked back to the Victorian in silence, and for once I wasn’t tempted to fill it with talk. I didn’t know what to say anyway. Half of me felt devastated by Sawyer’s ideas about addicts being beyond redemption, and the other half was floating over the rest of the morning, and how he looked at me in that one, perfect moment in the sun.

“So this rehearsal,” Sawyer said as we entered the Victorian. “It’s for the dance show you auditioned for?”

He unlatched Olivia from her stroller and lifted her gently in his arms. I folded the stroller and followed him up the stairs as if we’d been doing it like this for ages.

“Yeah, at the American Dance Academy, until five.”

He unlocked the door to his place and I followed him in, and left the stroller by the door. He went to put Olivia down in her bed, and came back with his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans.

The silence that fell was different now. Olivia wasn’t here to act as a buffer between