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Rolling his eyes as he tossed us his hands, Travis backed into the hall, and I threw my pen at Dom. “That was subtle.”
Like he did when trying to hide his temper from me, he stretched out in the chair and gave me a quick nose wrinkle. “Was it? Next time, I’ll just punch him in the damn mouth. How about that?”
“Okay, then.” I sighed as I pushed myself out of my chair. “Are you hungry?”
“Mmm-hmm.” When I glanced back at him, he was still stewing, his jaw clenching and foot bouncing at me. “Whatever.”
I set the fabric basket on the table behind him and shut the door. “Are you having a bad day?” Digging into his shoulder with my fingertips, I bent down to kiss his neck. “Cause you seem kind of stressed right now.”
Relaxed enough to stop shaking, he shook his head and slid his hand up my arm. “That asshole has been trying to get into your panties since we were sixteen, and now you work with him every day. So, yes, that’s a little stressful for me.”
I rocked forward so I could peek around his face. “Do you think some baked macaroni would help? Or how about the rest of that apple pie I made the other night? I brought both.”
Turning into me, he rubbed his nose against mine as he nodded. “Definitely. Thank you.”
I scratched his head as I left him and pulled the zippered bag out of the rectangular plaid carrier. “By the way,” — I dug a spoon into the yellow and brown casserole full of cheesy noodles — “when I got home last night, the bedding I ordered was sitting on the porch.” I dumped the concoction on the plate and put a fork inside it. “Got to love how competitive these retailers are getting with their shipping speeds. Huh?”
Still sucking the apple pie sludge from my thumb when he said, “That’s good. Because the bed should be at the house sometime today, too,” I froze there until he tugged at the bottom of my sweater. “Did you hear me, Faith?” I turned my chin over my shoulder and found him spinning a silver key around his finger. “It’s ours.”
My knees were so weak I barely got the chair from underneath the table before I fell into it. “Ours?” My entire body was numb, and my brain struggled to catch up to what he said. “Did you say it’s ours?”
The key landed in his palm, and he uncurled his arm, laying his hand in my lap. That’s all I could focus on as his voice squeezed through my confusion. “We can start moving in tonight if you want, unless you’d rather wait until the weekend so Jason and Carolyn can give us a hand.” Bending his neck to catch my attention, he opened his eyes wider and shook his head. “Personally, I vote for tonight, because I don’t think I can go to sleep without you ever again.”
Gently turning my hand over, he laid the key in my palm. I guess it should’ve made me feel happy or excited or something. But honestly, I felt a little disappointed and cheated. “You bought my house?”
His lips popped apart as he blew air from them, tilting his ear toward his shoulder. “Well, technically, you were trying to buy my house. I’d been looking at it for a while, but when you walked back into my life, I realized it was a sign to go all in finally.” He bent my fingers over it, gently squeezing me before he took his hand away. “We’re renting it until we close in a few weeks. But, yes, I bought us the house.”
A shrill series of beeps started in his chest pocket first, and he was already coming out of his chair as the announcement came overhead. “Code Blue ICU bed four. Code Blue Ice bed four. Code Blue ICU bed four.”
“Fuck.” He bent down to kiss my forehead on his way out the door. “Just pack that up for me. I might be a while.”
The door for the stairs slammed against the wall, and I heard his sneakers pounding the concrete steps until it shut again. But I don’t think I even blinked for an hour or two. I couldn’t move a muscle as I sat there staring at that little piece of metal in my hand and wondered what the hell had just happened.
36
Erratic
Faith
A loud clang came from the bedroom, and Jason yelled, “Goddammit,” when Carolyn shut the French doors behind her.
Pointing back inside with her thumb over her shoulder, she softly laughed at his cursing tirade. “For a guy who builds houses, he can’t put a bed together to save his life.”
She gave me a water bottle and sat beside me on the stone half-wall separating the deck from the yard. “The washer yodeled at me while I was walking by the basement door, so I tossed the sheets in the dryer for you.”
Twisting open the bottle, I gave her a quick smile and went back to staring at the grass that already needed to be cut. “Thanks.”
Swaying into me to bump my shoulder, she leaned over until I looked at her. “What’s wrong? You don’t seem thrilled for a woman who had a man buy her a house today.” When I only grinned back at her, she dug her finger into my thigh. “You must have some magic bajinga to get a place like this out of a man.”
The back of my hand wiped my mouth dry, and I spun the cap back on the bottle. “It’s crazy. Huh?”
I glanced over at her, and her eyebrows jerked up in a way that told me I might be the crazy one. “You think?”
Bending down enough to set the container on the ground beside me, I shook my head at how out of control things got in just a few hours. “One second, we’re saying hello after twenty years, and the next, he’s giving me the keys to his house.” Other than Dom, I never really had a serious long-term relationship with anyone. But I had enough experience under my belt to know all of this was moving way too fast for me. “I feel like we might have missed a few very important steps somewhere.”
To be sure he hadn’t sneaked home from work when I wasn’t paying attention, I stretched back to check that the door was still closed. “I’m not sure how this happened. I don’t think I said anything to make him believe I wanted him to do this.”
My fingers slid through my hair as I bent over and finally spit out what I was thinking. “He’s acting so erratic. I just don’t understand where this is coming from.”
