He looks into my eyes. “Then just tell me how you feel, Clifford.”
“I don’t know how to give it words,” I admit.
He chuckles. “Evie Allen, you’ve been throwing words at me for years. I know you have them. Now you just have to put them to use.”
I grab his hand, because his fingertips trailing up and down my naked arm is making it hard to think. “That’s just it, Grady,” I say. I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding wrong. “If we were fighting, I’d know exactly what to say. But this…” I suck in a breath. “The way you make me feel…” I let my words trail off again.
He takes a step back from me, and I feel the loss of him immediately. “Am I in this alone, Evie?” he asks soberly. “Or do you think you could love me?”
“I already love you, you knucklehead,” I say.
He laughs. “Only you could declare that you love me and call me a name at the same time.” He sobers again. “I feel like we’ve become friends,” he says quietly, almost shyly. “I really like it.”
“I do too.”
“Then there are times when I feel like we’re a lot more than friends.”
“Like when?” I ask.
“Like when I kiss you and you kiss me back. And when we talk about having babies. Whenever I think of my future, I picture you in it. And I don’t mean in a kind of come-and-go way. I want to come home to you every day, and I want to kiss you goodbye every morning. I don’t want to work in your yard. I want to work in our yard. I want to share my life with you, whatever that may mean.”
He reaches out and drags a finger down my cheek. “And I want you to tell me if you have the same dreams.” He quickly holds up two hands like he’s surrendering to the cops. “I understand if you’re not there yet. I just want to know if you have the potential to get there. With me.” He lays an open palm on his chest and presses down. “Evie, I’ve been in love with you for most of my life. Do you think you could ever love me back?”
He stands there, vulnerable and exposed, in front of me. He stands proudly and with no shame, and to be honest, that’s the only way I’d take him.
I take a step toward him because I feel like I need to be touching him. “I love what we’re doing, Grady. And I’d like to do it a little more. And I’d really like to see where it ends up. If it ends up with our lives mingling together and staying that wa
y, I’ll be the happiest woman on the planet. I’m just afraid that since we’ve fought so doggedly through the years that we’ll end up back there. And I would hate losing my best friend again.”
I lift my hand and scratch at the stubble of his beard. Normally Grady wears a ball cap that shades his eyes, but since we were at church, he doesn’t have one on now. I run my fingers through his hair, and his eyes fall shut.
He grins, and I start to feel my skirt rise as he rucks it up in his fingers. “At some point, I want to see those garters,” he says.
“What garters?” I whisper, grinning against his lips.
“I caught a glimpse of them this morning,” he says, as he slides a finger under one of the silky straps and plucks it. “When you were getting dressed.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “One day, in the very near future, I want to see them up close.”
I smile. “You can see them now, if you want.”
He shakes his head. “Not yet.” He straightens and takes a deep breath. “You want to go somewhere with me?”
“Sure. When?”
“Right now.” He grins at me. “I want to take you somewhere.”
“Where?”
He grins even bigger. “So you want to go or not?”
“You’re not going to tell me where?”
He shakes his head. “You’ll have to trust me.”
“Okay,” I reply with a shrug.
He takes my hand and pulls me toward the front door. I grab my purse on the way out the door and follow him.
We drive around the corner and about three miles away, and then we turn into Grady’s parents’ driveway. “This is your mom and dad’s house.” I look up and down the street.