Page 100 of Just Forever

Next thing I know, I’m being ushered inside.

I look around the dark foyer. A moment later Ryk flips the light switch, and we’re bathed in the light of a single sad bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling.

I turn to face him after another moment of resultless contemplation. “Okay, what am I looking at here?”

“It’s the house my parents want to sell.”

“Weren’t you dropping off the keys to the realtor the other day? Why are we here?”

He blows out a breath and runs his fingers through his hair, gaze moving over the walls before he faces me again. “I want to buy it.”

I digest those words for a bit. For some reason, buying a house feels like an impossibly grown-up thing to do, and hearing he wants to do that impossibly grown-up thing makes me feel distinctly not grown up.

Who buys a house?

He nudges me with his shoulder. “You still with me?”

I swallow and nod. “You want to buy a house?”

“Yes.”

“This house?”

He laughs softly. “Yes, this house. I want to buy it for us.”

“But…” I really don’t know what to say to that. The high ceiling in the foyer doesn’t really help with me feeling very small, so I walk farther into the house until I’m in the living area. That, too, is impossibly spacious. Not that Ryk and I live in squalor right now. It’s a perfectly respectable one-bedroom apartment. But it’s not roomy like this house. I back away a few steps until I hit a wall, and then I slowly sit down on the dusty floor and look around.

Ryk comes and sits down next to me, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, and thigh to thigh. He’s very calm, and I’m very not.

“Why?” I ask after a bit of silent contemplation.

He looks at me, eyes imploring and serious. “I want us to have a home. A permanent one. A place that’s here for us no matter what. Something that’s ours. Like a safe space.” He takes a look around. “I like Vermont, and I like Boston, but I love New York. I can see us settling here for good. I mean, I might get traded, or you might get a job somewhere other than here, but we can still keep this place. Rent it out while we’re away or… I’m sure we’ll figure that out if or when it happens.” He takes my hand and links our fingers. “But that’s only an idea. We’ll only go through with this if you want to. If you’re not into this place we can forget the idea and get on with things as we are.”

I draw in a big breath and force myself to see past the apprehension.

“You can see us here?” I ask. I sound pathetically vulnerable, but with Ryk it doesn’t matter.

“I can see us anywhere as long as we’re together. I like this place, though. A lot.” He gets up and holds his hand out to me. I grab it, and he pulls me to my feet.

“There are two bedrooms upstairs. And here…” He pulls me forward. “Here we could have a sitting area, and a kitchen there. We’d put in bigger windows here. There’s another bedroom through there.” He points to another door. “I figured we could have an office for you, so you’d have a place to study.”

He keeps walking around, describing what he’s seeing in his mind, and the empty space around us fills with his imagination. By the time he’s done I can see everything he says so clearly in my mind’s eye.

Some of the apprehension is still there. How could it not be? This is still a lot to take in at once.

But it’s also enticing. To have a home. A real brick and mortar home. A place of our own. Something that belongs to us and only us.

It’s the kind of security that’s been lacking in my life for a long time. Forever. I’ve never even acknowledged to myself this might be something that’s missing for me, but somehow Ryk knows it and wants to give it to me.

And I’m hovering and trying to find cons in this plan for some reason.

“What do you think?” Ryk looks at me expectantly. Hopefully. But at the same time, I know that should I say no to this, he wouldn’t be disappointed and would just accept it like he does everything else when it comes to me.

In the end, I nod. “Let’s make your parents an offer.”

A few days later,I’m in the chemistry lab, packing up my stuff, when Paige stops by my desk.

“Hey, you,” she says brightly. Honestly, hats off to her for the persistence. I’m not sure what it is that keeps her coming back to me, since I’ve been determinedly a standoffish asshole to her from the start.

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