Hate to Lose You

2

Bronson

“What about this one?”

It takes every ounce of effort in me not to physically flinch at the hot pink shag carpet Daisy’s pointing to. Still, I must give something away, because one glance over her shoulder at me, and Daisy dissolves into a fit of laughter.

“Oh, my god. You should see your face, Bronson. You didn’t think I was serious, did you?” That grin of hers, the one she wears when she’s deliberately trying to drive me crazy—which, to be honest, is most of the damn time—still drives me wild.

I make a grab for her waist, but she dances out of reach. “You know, much more of this and I’ll have to spank you later,” I comment, one eyebrow raised as she skips ahead of me up the aisle of Ikea.

“Oh, trust me, I’m counting on that,” she calls over her shoulder, those baby blues flashing in the bright neon overhead lighting.

I know we’re a walking cliché. The way she makes me feel is something I’d only ever seen in cheesy rom-com movies—movies I assumed were exaggerated, playing up the romance to unbelievable levels just so they can paint a healthily unrealistic ideal for us men to try (and fail) to live up to. But even being in this fucking Ikea with her, of all places, the dreaded store where relationships go to die…

It feels right.

My heart feels lighter than it has in years as I follow her through the aisles, my gaze glued as usual to her perfectly proportioned backside, drinking her in as she skips from one ridiculous set of apartment decor to the next.

“And this one?” Also pink, this time a bedspread with embroidered kittens on it.

This time I don’t fall for it. I roll my eyes skyward right off the bat. When I look back at her, though, she’s pouting. “You do not actually like this,” I say.

“Not for our room, silly.” Her eyes flash.

“Oh, you’d like this comforter for the baby’s room, then?” I reply, smirking. Two can play at this game. The see-how-serious-you’ll-pretend-we-are game.

Her cheeks flame bright red, and I know I’ve scored a point. But when she glances down and away, I catch a hint of something else. A downturn at the corner of her mouth. Like maybe she wasn’t completely kidding.

Then again, neither was I.

It’s only been a month you lunatic, I scold myself internally. But what a fucking month it’s been.

From the day we met, we’ve been inseparable. We drove to her place straight from our ignoble beginning in that grocery store parking lot, and we wound up fucking three more times in the next 24 hours. The second time, we barely made it through her front door before I pinned her against it, unable to wait another second to feel her tight, hot pussy clenched around my cock again.

The third time we managed to control ourselves for a couple more hours, until we’d finished cooking dinner together—turns out she’s a shit cook, but I more than make up for it with the culinary skills I picked up in between jobs back in Vegas. You learn to get real creative in the kitchen when you realize that your seemingly bottomless pool of backup money is dwindling fast.

On the bright side, Daisy is very good at serving dessert. My favorite course of the night was when we finally gave in and shoved her silverware and dishes to the floor, halfway through cleaning up the meal, so that I could hoist her ass onto the dinner table instead, spread her legs and savor her all over again.

And then there was the blowjob she woke me up with the next morning, straight from a sex dream I’d been having about her, as if she could read my mind… Or maybe as if she’d popped right out of my brain herself, a dream brought to life, who always knows exactly what I want, when and how to touch me, even just to smile at me, to get me rock hard again.

But it isn’t just the sex that’s got my brain going haywire. It’s everything. The way she memorized my coffee order the first time we stopped at a Starbucks on our way to work together—her at the local bank where she’s interning as the secretary to gain experience before she starts to apply for a higher level office job; and me to my apartment where I “work from home” (at least, so I tell her). Since then, she keeps the brand I like and the milk I drink it with stocked at her house, even though she’s lactose intolerant and can’t have any herself.

I got sick a couple weeks ago, and I came home from a late night of negotiating my way into a longer back-payment option, only to find her outside my house with her arms full of cold remedies and at least six different types of tea, because she didn’t know which one I preferred yet.

And it’s our conversations. No matter what we’re talking about, from the weather to sports scores to our dreams, Daisy has an opinion about it, and it’s one I want to hear. She’s whip-smart, funny…

I’ve never met anyone like her. I’ve never felt so comfortable with anyone before, and I’ve definitely never fallen into a relationship this easily. Hell, normally at this one-month point in seeing a girl, I’d be chomping at the bit, eager to cut and run. And I’d never use the R-word, even in my head.

Yet somehow, with her, her little joke about buying a comforter for a hypothetical baby’s room someday in the future doesn’t even freak me out. It gets me… I don’t know.

Excited.

This must be what going crazy feels like. But if so, I don’t ever want to be sane again.

“Seriously, though,” Daisy is saying, as we both drift further into the Ikea. “What kind of a vibe are you going for?”

She talked me into coming here—mostly by hyping up the meatballs I’ve been promised after we complete this walk-through—because, as she puts it, my apartment is “a barren wasteland where taste and culture go to die.” Or, as I put it, “tastefully minimalist in its decor.”

But she does have a point. I have a single uncomfortable couch, a dining counter with two stools, and my bed—that, I notice, she has no complaints about. Probably because I’ve tied her down to it enough times that she’s been forced to concede it is comfortable as hell. And plenty large enough for me to toss her across it easily…

And that’s it.

It’s the apartment of someone who doesn’t plan to stay here long. The apartment of someone just passing through, someone who doesn’t want to—who can’t want to—put down roots. Because that’s the reality of my situation. I can’t stay here.

No matter how surreally perfect this month has been. No matter how easily I could picture folding into a lifestyle here—picking Daisy up after work every day, grocery shopping for dinner while we both flash each other grins as we pass our parking spot under the tree out back, decorating a house together on the weekends, watching scary movies until she hides under the blanket and needs me to hug her all night long (which might be my motive for always choosing scary movies in the first place)…

No matter how fast I’m falling for her, I know this can’t last. Sooner or later, my past will catch up with me. And then I’ll need to move on. No matter how perfect a life it is, I’ll be leaving it behind.

And yet. Here I am.

“Hello? Earth to Bronson.” Daisy waves a hand in front of my face. “Did you have a stroke at the idea of more than a single decorative element in your minimal apartment paradise or something?”

I laugh and roll my eyes. “I was just debating the pink shag. You know, now that you’ve brought it up, I do think it would add a fun pop of color to the room. Maybe we should go look at it again.”

She scowls. I laugh again. Daisy hates pink even more than I do. “I said be serious, Bron! This is your home we’re talking about. How do you want to feel when you walk into it?”

I reach out and wrap my hands around her waist. Tug her toward me. She moves with me, steps right up so her body is flush against mine, and the soft touch of her belly against my hard abs makes my blood run south. “How do I want to feel when I come home? Turned-on, does that count?”

She snorts. “So you want us to find you one of those sexy leg lamps, is that what you’re saying?” She wriggles against me, and I tighten my grip on her waist, sliding one hand down dangerously cl

ose to her ass in this public a space.

She bats her eyes at me. I grin at her. “Only if it’s a model of your legs,” I counter. Then, with a quick glance around—the aisle we’re in is deserted—I drop my hand to squeeze a handful of her pert ass, hard. “Your ass, too, would look fantastic as a light fixture.”

She slaps my chest with a groan. But her cheeks are going red, too. I know she’s getting just as turned on as I already am. Yet this time, she twists out of my grasp. “How come you always do that?” she asks.

“Do what, grab your ass? It’s magnetic, Daisy, hardly my fault if I can’t keep my hands off you.”