Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Perspective wasn’t always easy.
Lucas decided to give Delaney some since she was so worried about him. “The fact you’re here is the only reason I haven’t been on some crisis hotline or draining my bank account for my four-hundred-dollar-an-hour therapist. You give me something to focus on, and that’s okay with me. I’m aware that I hold things together really well. On the surface, yes. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I didn’t have much of a choice growing up but to do things, and get them done right the first time around.”
Delaney swallowed hard, her brow pinching in pain. “See, like that. You say things like that and it just makes me want to hold you.”
He chuckled.
That was not at all what he expected her to say. Funny. To him, he thought they kind of wanted to do the same things. Just for each other. To comfort and care.
“You can do that,” he told her. “Hold me together. I don’t have to be breaking apart while you do it, though.”
Her chest deflated with a hard breath. “Okay, so that’ll just be me doing that between us sometimes, then?”
Lucas smirked.
“What?” Delaney asked.
“You said us, like it’s a thing. That makes it real, right? I mean …” His eyebrows jumped high. “You said it.”
That time, it was her turn to smile.
“You know, I almost broke another rule for you today, Lucas Dalton, but you surprised me again,” Delaney murmured, pointing her index finger against the center of his chest. Could she feel the way his heart thundered there—did she have the first clue it was because of her?
“Did I?”
She nodded, but her stare dropped a bit as she whispered, “You would have been the first man I ever slept with that I didn’t make label what we were before I got into bed with him.”
Yep.
Would have.
Except he wasn’t here to make her break rules, and he only heard one thing in all she said that mattered to him.
“So, like I said,” Lucas told her, “the us thing—it’s real. You said it first. I just agreed.”
Her sneaky grin that she tried to hide as she spun around to face the stove again didn’t escape his notice, and this time, he fit against her back where he could tuck his face into her neck. He kissed the soft, warm skin that pebbled under his lips and grabbed two fistfuls of her oversized sweater to keep them close, molding their bodies together, as she took the cover off the top of the pot.
“Delaney,” he whispered along the column of her neck.
“Hmm?”
Her question came with a shiver.
He fisted the fabric of her sweater tighter, telling her, “Definitely an us.”
“And now you said it,” she agreed. “So, I guess we’re doing that, huh?”
“Guess so, sweets.”
So there it was.
At that declaration, he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“I’m putting a can of diced tomatoes in this,” she told him. “It’ll need to simmer for at least twenty-five minutes if you want it to taste really good.”
There was something about her tone.
Suggestive, maybe.
“Mmhmm, and?” he asked.
“For the rest of the day, all we’re going to do is eat good food, fuck, maybe drink … and we’re not going to talk about your shitty parents, or mine, or about anything else that doesn’t make us both feel really, really good. Deal?”
Jesus Christ.
He would hate every aching second it took her to open that damn can of tomatoes, pour it into the pot, and stir it around.
So be it.
All in all, it seemed like a worthy trade to him.
“Deal,” he returned.
Chapter 24
“H-hello?” came a sleepy, familiar voice when the call clicked through.
“How are you already asleep?” Delaney asked Gracen. “It’s barely even nine.”
“I’m pregnant,” Gracen grumbled on the other end of the call, unapologetic. “Don’t judge my sleep patterns, okay?”
Delaney snickered under her breath. “You got it, babe. Ask Malachi who’s winning for me?”
She seriously doubted he was crawling into bed with Gracen before ten on a hockey night, and despite the flat screen in their big master bedroom, he wouldn’t keep her up while he watched, either. Besides, Gracen hated hockey.
Gracen’s muffled yell on the other end of the call made Delaney think her friend had covered the speaker. It crackled for a second before Gracen came back on the line with a surprising answer.
“The Bruins.”
“Really?”
How many years had that been, now?
“Are they the penguin one?” Gracen asked.
Delaney only laughed. “You don’t care.”
“Not really,” Gracen agreed, happily, humming sleepily at the same time. Delaney could almost imagine her friend snuggling deeper into the fluffy duvet and pillows that made up Gracen’s big bed. “The better question,” her friend said, “is why you are calling me at nine, huh? Didn’t you tell me you were working on something earlier?”
Gracen couldn’t see the way Delaney’s cheeks pinked at the blatant question, but she still dropped her head like her friend could. She focused on the bright white tips of her manicure in the darkness of the cottage’s loft, her fingers curled around the back of the booster that she had to keep her phone on while she talked, or it would lose the connection. Thank God for the speakerphone. Naked under the quilt she kept tossed over her shoulders as she sat on the edge of the combined twin beds, only her toes grazed the cold hardwood floor.