The Woman at the Docks - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,51

of wants to clear their name. And they should. You should. On the plus side, when you are proven right, you can make them eat so much shit for being assholes to you."

"Well now, that does sound like it was worth one night on the run from them."

"They're good men, sweetheart. They just think I'm not using my head when it comes to you. And they want to protect me."

"I don't plan on hurting you," I told him, meaning it, willing him to believe me.

"I know, sweetheart," he told me, dropping the three-cheese ravioli into a pot of boiling water. "And they will know that too. Eventually."

"So what else are we making? We can't just have ravioli for dinner."

"Why not?"

"We need something green, don't we?" I asked.

"I think there's spinach in with the cheese," he said, shrugging. "It counts."

"I like your thinking," I decided, smiling.

"Besides, carbs are a pre-workout," he added, giving me a suggestive little smile.

"Right. We really will need to carb up."

"That's what I'm saying," he agreed.

When I would look back, it was this moment in particular when I was sure I had started to fall a little bit in love with him.

But in the moment, all I would admit to myself was a giant amount of like.

And an even bigger dose of lust.

Chapter Twelve

Luca

I'd always been content with my life.

I made my decisions.

I enjoyed my work.

I made good money.

I lived in a nice home.

I had freedom should I want it.

I had a big, loving family.

I had always been good with that.

But it wasn't until the days following bringing Romy into my house that I realized that was all it was.

Contentedness.

Because what I had following those days was much more.

It was happiness.

Something harder to explain, something that didn't come with a nice house or a full bank account or even a job you were passionate about.

It came from something different, less material.

I didn't recognize it at first.

It was a series of small things that didn't exactly match up.

Like the fact that I was happy to go home, instead of doing it begrudgingly just to get a little sleep before getting back to work.

Or that every morning found me lingering in bed instead of up early and taking a run, breaking a decade-long tradition.

Like the fact that when I was at work, I was thinking about home, what we'd have for dinner, what we might watch on TV, what I might learn about her that day.

But as I was making my coffee one morning, Romy still fast asleep in bed—since I'd woken her up around three a.m. to give her a couple of screaming orgasms before I'd let her go back to sleep—that it all started to fall together for me, create this bigger picture that I hadn't seen before.

I was happy.

And the only thing that was different in my life was Romy.

I'd known women before. I'd casually dated. I'd even dated some women for a few weeks or months, always finding it was never quite right, we didn't quite click, that, eventually, their presence felt more like a hindrance than an asset, something that brought stress instead of pleasure.

And, I guess, that was the difference the right woman made, wasn't it?

She didn't bring chaos.

She brought calm.

And the kind of happiness that made my chest feel tight when I thought about it for too long.

And that was exactly how my chest felt as I stood there in the kitchen brewing an extra cup of coffee, reaching into the cupboard for a bottle of the caramel syrup I'd picked up for her two days before, after finally wiggling it out of her that she liked it, because she'd stubbornly been insisting that plain coffee was fine.

I didn't want just fine anything for her.

And that, well, that was a fuck of a revelation too.

I wanted to give her the best of everything.

Sure, I'd always been a decent date, who treated women with the respect they deserved. I always took them to nice places and I always paid.

But I hadn't started thinking about all the ways I could make everything even better; I wasn't constantly wondering in what ways I could outdo myself.

Until Romy.

I wanted her to have the perfect coffee.

And I wanted her to have all the ingredients she needed to make her favorite foods.

I wanted her to have the kinds of clothes she would pick out for herself, but in better quality.

And I found a certain amount of satisfaction in that. The same kind I would get from making a