Something fluttered inside me, and I bit back a smile as he tugged me gently over to him by the pocket of my jeans.
“Adam,” I said softly. I was definitely happy to see that he was okay enough to still be thinking about this, but mustering every ounce of good behavior in me, I removed his hand from my pocket and set it back in his lap. “That won’t be happening right now,” I said.
I’d actually meant to say “that won’t be happening,” as in at all, but the last two words just slipped in, and I tried to tell myself it didn’t make an actual difference.
Adam’s blue eyes glinted as he read my inner turmoil with ease. “You don’t want me to?”
“No,” I replied fast, absently organizing his mail again. And though I wasn’t looking at him, I could hear the smile he broke into, which made me want to smile too.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want me to make you come again.”
I wet my lips, which reluctantly curved at the edges. And though I didn’t look up at him, I did answer.
“I do want it,” I said quietly, as if there were other people in the room. “But I can’t afford to know how good that feels.”
“Why not?” Adam asked.
Because.
Because I just got chewed out by my sister for sleeping with you this morning.
Because I’m afraid of feeling more than whatever I’m feeling now, which I’m pretty sure is already too much.
“Because you’re my boss,” I finally replied, looking up at him. It seemed like a pretty solid reason. “But anyway.” He looked amused as I changed the subject. “I’m going to cook for you now.”
“As long as you stay and eat with me.”
“I can do that,” I said before going over to his fridge and having a look at the groceries. “Okay. Where’s your cast iron?”
“What’s that?”
I turned around and laughed at the earnest cluelessness on his face. “It’s a pan, Adam.”
“Sorry. I’ve been kitchen illiterate my whole life.”
“Really?” I laughed as I started opening all the drawers and cabinets to look for everything I needed.
“Yes. I feel like that shouldn’t surprise you.”
“Well, on TV you’d always see jock boys like you constantly raiding the fridge and eating everything in sight.”
“Yeah, well, I generally avoided the kitchen and downstairs as much as possible. Unless Iain was over. And even then we did our best to be upstairs or outside.”
The mental image I had in my head sharpened as he talked about nights he’d crashed in the pool house with Iain. I hadn’t known that particular detail. What I knew was that in college and law school, Adam couldn’t be motivated to visit for holidays unless he was allowed to bring a friend. I’d always figured it was a boredom thing, but I should’ve known bringing Iain was also for mere survival’s sake.
Well, at least that eventually worked out for Holland, I thought to myself, freshly charmed by the thought that many years later, she managed to land her dream crush from her childhood.
“I take it all this was to avoid your mom?” I asked as I located the cutting boards.
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t help shaking my head a little. I knew that Adam’s relationship with Jeannie was rocky, but I could never really wrap my mind around just how awful it was.
Or more importantly, why.
“Were you really that bad of a kid?” I asked cautiously, half-expecting that Adam would say “dungeon” and move on. But instead he laughed.
“Between you and Emily, you were considered the bad kid right?”