Page 107 of The Difference Between

I swallow. “It does.”

We’re not dancing anymore, just standing close. Looking at each other and breathing between notes of old music.

He says, “A hard thing for a thirty-year-old who cuts grass in Fontain to compete with.”

On paper, he can’t—he accepts mediocrity, and I will always choose excellence—but right here, right now, there’s not a skyscraper in that city I’d rather be in nor a single person I’d rather be with.

“I don’t know,” I tell him, coy. “Half the men in Chicago probably don’t even know how to start a mower.”

He smiles and I fight the urge to touch it. Only then I remember I’m not supposed to be fighting anything and let my hand go. My index finger traces his lips then his jaw then down his neck until I take hold of his tie with both hands.

He wets his lips, and I watch. I bite my lip, and he watches that.

“Is this the part where you kiss me, Davy Crockett?”

He inches closer, fighting a smile. “Say please.”

I give his tie one hard yank, and there his mouth is, colliding with mine.

His hands move from my hips to my hair to my back, roaming every curve.

I nip at his lip; he does the same.

We kiss and we kiss and we kiss until my back hits my mother’s house and Gavin’s hard body is pressing against me.

I want him everywhere with nothing between us. I want skin on skin and sweat on sweat. I want long looks and a longer night. I want, I want, I want.

Until he murmurs, “God, you’re incredible, Reese,” and it sucks the air out of the night sky and turns me to stone.

Because even though that may be true, I’ve lied to him.

He has no clue that I was sent away from work as a course correction for working too much or that I just lied to him about having a condo of friends and playing miniature golf. Nor does he know that I’m trying to get pregnant by a stranger because there’s nobody in my real life to get me pregnant.

Nobody to the point that him hugging me in a closet was the most intimacy I’ve felt in years, and I’ve spent half the hours of the last days wondering what it would be like to feel like that—with him—forever.

Him calling me incredible is like me saying a business is viable because they have a lot of followers on social media or a good logo. He has no idea what he’d find with a deep-dive evaluation, and I don’t know how to tell him.

Gavin pulls his mouth from mine. “What’s wrong?”

“I have to go.” A burn ignites in the back of my nose, and I slip out of his arms. “Mom needs medicine. I just remembered.”

He looks at the front door like he’s expecting to see my mother standing there. “Oh.” He clears his throat. “Can I⁠—”

“Thank you for this.” With his hair slightly disheveled and his loose tie around his neck, he’s perfectly imperfect in a way I never knew to expect. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I eye his suit as I open the door. “Maybe next time go with a tux.”

This, at least, makes him smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Behind the closed door, my thoughts are dragged into a game of tug-of-war. I am a logical woman who is illogically attracted to this man.

I don’t understand his life choices, but I want to be with him.

I want a baby, but I want to be with him.

He thinks I’m incredible, but I feel anything but.

And Chicago . . . once upon a time I wanted to come back here—it’s in black and white on lined paper—yet now here I am, and I don’t know how to let what I have—bleak as it now seems—go. My career. The winning and the grind. As a kid, I imagined it would be easy, but now it’s filled with so many unknowns that I’m utterly terrified.

Mom appears with a stupid look on her face. “Well?” She wipes her hands on her apron. “How was it?”