Her All Along

“You overlooked something in your plan.” I tapped the notepad with my finger. “While you were trying to figure out how to, as you put it, make me fall in love with you, you started spending your summer with me.”

She nodded. “I know. I rushed into step two.”

I grinned faintly. “Baby, that’s where step one happens. But you don’t have to do anything except be yourself, because that’s the young woman I already adore.”

“Oh.” She pinched her lips together, the picture of concentration.

Now came the hard part…

I blew out a breath and winced internally at a stab of discomfort in my chest.

“You’re going away for two years.” I rubbed her neck gently. “No matter how strict you are with the goals you’ve set, you’ll be in a new city. You’ll meet new people, make new friends. Balancing responsibilities and hobbies is already so difficult for you, hon. Every time you find a new interest, you dedicate yourself to it one hundred percent, and everything else sort of disappears.”

She could multitask expertly on mindless chores, much better than I could. But as soon as she needed to concentrate, her world shrank to include only her and the problem she faced. There’d been times I’d come home from work to find her cooking, baking, talking on the phone, and painting her toenails all in one jumbled moment. Then, ask her to write a grocery list, and she’d need to sit down in silence so she could focus.

“You don’t honestly believe I’d forget my home, do you?” Pipsqueak scowled up at me.

I kissed her forehead. “No. But I think you’ll be too busy and distracted by your new life in California—and if you force anything outside of what you can handle, your studies might suffer.”

She crumpled in an instant, bottom lip quivering, eyes filling with tears. “But I don’t wanna be without you, Avery.”

Goddammit. “You don’t have to be, baby.” It felt like my heart crawled up into my throat, making it difficult to swallow. “You don’t have to be.” I cupped her cheek and coaxed her to look me in the eye. “Another thing you got very wrong in your plan—I already know you’re worth waiting for.”

She whimpered through her tears. “Really?”

“Come on.” I smirked a little in an attempt to lighten the tension. “It’s you and me. I’m not going anywhere. I may not know exactly what’s going on in my head, but I have a feeling I know where I’ll stand once I’ve let the dust settle.” I removed my arm from her shoulders so I could brush my thumbs under her eyes. She shouldn’t cry. “We both need time, Elise.”

She sniffled and shook her head. “Time just means you’ll change your mind. I know it.”

“Uh, first of all, you’re wrong,” I told her. “And I think you need to get to know the man I once was in order to have a little more faith in the man I am today.”

Remorse struck her gaze, and she clutched one of my hands in both of hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I don’t have faith in you. I’m just—fuck.” She whimpered again and wiped at her eyes. “I don’t want you to forget me and move on with someone else.”

Further proof that I had to unlock my sordid past and share some things I’d rather not. But if this was actually happening, if Pipsqueak and I were going to take the plunge into something very new and unfamiliar, I wanted her to know what she was getting herself into.

“Not gonna happen.” I leaned down and rested our foreheads together. “Can I make a suggestion?”

“Technically, you can—”

“May I,” I corrected with a chuckle and a sense of déjà vu. I was fairly certain we’d been here before. Years ago. “Pipsqueak, I want to take you out to dinner. I want us to spend these last couple weeks together. Then you’ll go off to California knowing that I will be here, waiting to give us a shot. And if you, at any time during your years in San Francisco, meet someone—”

“Nooo, don’t say it like that,” she protested tearfully.

I withheld my sigh. “I’m serious, Elise. If you meet someone, you tell me. We need to be completely honest with each other.”

She let out a muffled cry behind her hand, then climbed up on my lap and shook her head. “You’re only saying this because I haven’t made you fall in love with me yet.”

I smiled and pulled her closer, kinda cursing the fact that she still had leggings under her dress. “It doesn’t matter how I feel for you. You’re already one of the most important people in my life, and I refuse to hold you back. Your life is just starting, Elise. And for this next part, I’m not going to be right beside you. But I will wait, and if your grand plan ends up being a prediction of what’s to come, then…that sounds fucking fantastic to me.”