Page 16 of Quit Playing Games with My Heart

“Yeah,” I said, my face heating. “See? Right here. ‘Relationships between employees of Common Grounds are permitted, provided that they are disclosed to management.’”

“Oh!” Brian’s smile grew even wider. “That’s…that’s great.”

Something tickled at the back of my mind, but I was already psyching myself up for what I was about to ask, so I let it go.

“Maybe it was self-serving of me to change the rule for my own benefit, but I feel like we’ve been circling around the obvious for way too long now,” I said, heart pounding so hard it rivaled the noise of the machines outside.

“What have we been circling around?” Brian asked, every sweet, innocent part of him that I was so attracted to rushing to the surface along with an adorable blush.

“That we’re good together,” I said, setting the paper aside and walking right up to him. I rested my hands on his waist. “That we deserve a chance to see where things could go.”

“Yeah, we have kinda been circling around that.” Brian’s smile grew by at least a thousand watts.

“So what do you say?” I asked, shifting into the cool, suave, older guy role. “Do you want to go out with me tomorrow night? Dinner, maybe a movie or something after, maybe just a walk.”

“I’d love to,” Brian said on an enthusiastic exhale. “I would have asked you out myself sooner, but I didn’t think it would be…you know.”

“Well, now we don’t have to worry about any of that,” I said, cupping the side of his face with one hand. “I shouldn’t have let a few words in an employee handbook hold me back anyhow.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Brian said, beaming up at me.

I really wanted to kiss him, but as I leaned in to do just that, Gilbert stormed into the room.

“I swear to God, this construction is going to turn my hair grey and drive me to an early—oh. Shit.” He pulled to a stop as soon as he saw how the two of us were standing. “Do you two need a few more minutes to⁠—”

“No, we’re good,” I said, letting go of Brian and taking a step back. My brothers really needed to stop interrupting just as things were getting interesting for me. I grinned at Brian and winked. “We can finish this business on our date tomorrow night, right?”

“Right,” Brian echoed, beaming.

Gilbert threw up his arms. “It’s about damn time.”

CHAPTER 6

Brian

“You look hot,” Kendra told me as she stepped back and surveyed her handiwork. She’d insisted on helping me pick out something to wear on my date with Sam and styling me, as she called brushing my hair and telling me to wear the old watch that had belonged to my granddad instead of my usual smartwatch. “Someone’s gonna get lucky tonight, short king.”

I burst into an embarrassing, snorty laugh. “I mean, I hope so, but I’m not counting on anything.”

Kendra fixed me with a lopsided smile and shook her head. “Samwise Meyers isn’t going to be able to resist your cute ass tonight,” she said. “And lucky for you, I’ve got an overnight shift at the hospital, so you’re free and clear to come back here.”

“Thanks,” I said, face heating. All of me heating, really. “I’m still not making any assumptions about how tonight will go.”

“Mmm hmm,” Kendra answered in a way that said she’d already decided how things were going to go in her head.

I really didn’t want to make any assumptions, though. Sure, Sam and I had been building up to this date for what felt like years now, but there were still a lot of unknown factors. God only knew I’d held back a lot of things about myself over the years. I wasn’t entirely certain how Sam would see me if he knew the whole truth.

But that’s what dates were for, right? They were opportunities to really focus in on people and get to know them so that you could see whether there was more than just attraction there.

I really wanted there to be more than attraction between me and Sam. Sam was the most amazing guy I’d ever known. He was smart, kind, and funny. He took charge of things in a way that made me feel like everything would be alright and my life wouldn’t randomly fall apart because of a few learning challenges.

Or, at least, that my life wouldn’t fall apart a second time because of those challenges.

I was hopeful, but well aware that I had some hurdles to overcome before I could breathe easy.

The first of those hurdles was the reason why I showed up at Closed Mondays a good fifteen minutes before Sam and I had agreed to meet there. There was something important I had to do first.

“Excuse me,” I asked a cute Filipino waiter as he brought a handful of menus back to the front. “Can I look at one of those?”