In a Fix (Torus Intercession 2)

“Hey,” Dallas said, walking up beside me. I shifted over so he could sit down.

“What happened?”

He cleared his throat. “Evidently Evan saw one of his buddies the other day, who mentioned that he saw me and you when we had dinner at that Italian place with Callum and Gina, when her sister was in town.”

I waited as he took hold of my hand.

“And I guess he mentioned that I looked really good.”

It was true. Dallas was always gorgeous, but having a home, having me here to take care of him, making sure he ate right, slept, ran with me…he was sort of glowing. And he was even up for a promotion. Higa had left for a post in Los Angeles, and Montez was being promoted to special agent in charge, so she was advocating for Dallas to fill her former role as assistant. I was keeping my fingers crossed for him. With Sergio’s and my business doing well, building our client base and reputation, everything was going so well that somedays I woke up afraid that it was all a dream, and that I’d be back in Chicago and never feel the sun on my face again. It was funny that only now did I realize how unhappy I’d been. It took holding a mirror up to the old me to see all the possibilities.

“I guess I look different now that you’re with me,” he said, and I heard him swallow, and his breath hitched as his gaze met mine. “And I think I know what would fix any confusion about whether I’m available or not, but I don’t know if…”

He got up and walked a few feet away and came back, must have thought better of it, and walked farther, out near the palm trees, and then came back. I got up and stood there, realizing that even though I’d thought them in my head a million times, I’d never said the actual words to him. Neither had he said them to me, but if I had to guess, that was probably because even though I was there, and he knew how he felt, and knew that I wanted to be there, I could still be somewhat hard to get a read on.

“Dallas,” I said, stopping him from walking away again. “I thought that, somehow, not telling you exactly how I feel was the safe thing to do, even though I’ve felt this way pretty much from the beginning.”

“What?”

“No? That wasn’t clear?”

“How could that have possibly been clear?”

“All right,” I said, taking a breath. “I felt that if I told you I loved you too soon, that it would mean less, that it would seem hasty, I’m sure, to anyone looking at it from the outside.”

He was staring at me like I’d sprouted horns or something.

“Also, I’ve never loved anyone before, so it took a bit to figure out what it was.”

His smile then, huge and blinding. “Like maybe you had the flu or something.”

“Don’t make fun.”

“No, no, not at all.”

I coughed and scowled at him. “But I’ve come to realize that I don’t want to see anyone but you, don’t want to be with anyone more than I want to be with you, and I don’t want to touch anyone more than I want to touch you. I’m lighter when you’re with me, and I missed you when you had to go to Orlando for that meeting, and so I think—I know,” I said, my voice failing for a moment before I recovered, “that it’s love.”

He nodded, still beaming at me.

“I love you very much,” I husked, breathing in through my nose. “And while I appreciate you putting my name on the deed to the house and allowing me to pay half the mortgage every month, I want us to split everything else too. I’d like our lives to be a tangled mess of finances and possessions, and I’d like us to get a pet.”

“Oh yeah? You wanna get a dog?”

I made a face. “Perhaps not a dog.”

“Yeah, you’re a cat person, that makes sense.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

He moved in close, hands on my hips, gazing into my eyes. “Cats make the choice to be loved, not their human, and they’re arrogant and aloof unless they love you back, and then they’re big goofballs that lie on the floor with their feet up in the air.”

“Are you insinuating that with you I’m a—”

“I love you back,” he whispered, placing a soft, sweet kiss on my mouth before easing back. “I was in lust the second you put Digby Ingram on the ground, and we’ve been together almost every day since. When I have to travel, it’s almost physically painful for me. Talking to you on the phone, knowing I have to go to sleep and not see you, is just bad. The long-distance thing would’ve never worked. If you’d left, I would’ve followed.”