Page 80 of Say You Will

Her words feel like a dismissal. “Nice?”

“You’ve been so kind to me ever since I came back to New York. I feel safe with you. My father isn’t the best. He’s not the worst either, but I think I probably have what would bedescribed as ‘daddy issues.’ The fact that I can even admit that to you is crazy,” she says with a small laugh.

I watch her, listening carefully. Suddenly, this conversation feels important.

“My parents play games. They’ve always known I craved their attention, and they used it against me my entire life. I was afraid, at first, that your flirting was more of the same, but I trust you not to use my feelings to manipulate me to get your hands on that company.”

Bile churns in my gut. I thought Gabriel was full of shit when he didn’t understand that I could want her and still find the company an added benefit, but that Franki would understand. What I’m doing isn’t manipulation. It isn’t fake simply because it’s also tactical. This can be real with her, and I can still want those shares. They aren’t mutually exclusive.

“I shouldn’t have doubted you. I knew you were one of the good guys all along,” she says.

“I’m not agood guy.” I haven’t lost sleep when I’ve had to kill someone in years. I feel zero guilt over exterminating cockroaches. I’m a man built of flaws cobbled together with a rigid code of honor.

At my almost vicious tone, she clears her throat and looks away. Color seems to fade from her face until she looks nearly ill. Shoving the water bottle at me, Franki rips off her beanie and tries to give me both the hat and blanket. I accept them, confused by her change in attitude.

She gives me a shaky smile. “I guess this is good night. I’ll see you tomorrow. Technically, it’s already today, but—” She stops talking abruptly. “Anyway, good night.”

She turns to leave, and I place the items she’s returned to me on the nearby side table. Before she’s taken two steps, I wrap one arm around her chest and one around her waist to halt herprogress. I’m gentle with her, but im-fucking-movable. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She shivers at the low rumble of my voice in her ear. “I thought you wanted me to leave because I made it weird when I overshared about my father?”

“Henceforth and furthermore, if you are ever in doubt, always assume I don’t want you to leave.”

Eyes closed, she blows out a slow breath.

“Do you know why I despise the term ‘daddy issues’?” I struggle to regulate the flatness of my tone for her sake, but my anger is riding me too hard to sound like the nice, kind, good guy she thinks I am.

She shakes her head.

“Any time you hear that phrase, it’s being used as an indictment against the person who has been harmed, rather than the person who did the harm. It’s an insidious form of victim blaming.”

“I’m not a victim. My father wasn’t abusive.”

“There are many ways to abuse someone. They don’t all show themselves on your skin. I want you to share your thoughts with me. When it comes to you and me, there’s nothing you can’t tell me.”

“You stared at me, Henry. You weren’t very encouraging.”

“It wasn’t my intention to make you feel anxious. Sometimes I do that when I’m thinking. If I take issue with something, I’ll say so.”

She relaxes against me.

“You and I,” I say quietly as I turn her in my arms, “have a higher risk of miscommunication than average. You have to talk to me, not run away.”

“There’s something in that sentence that I should be arguing with, but it’s four a.m. and I’m too tired to figure out what it is,” she says on a yawn.

I lead her to my bed and pull back the covers. “We’ll sleep. You can tell me why I’m wrong in the morning.”

She climbs into the bed, and I turn off the bathroom light before joining her and drawing the comforter over both of us. Under the covers, I lift her pajama top until I feel warm, smooth skin, then wrap my arm around her waist.

Her hair smells like the outdoors. I breathe her in as the entire length of her body lies flush against mine.

The position is similar to the way I held her when we had sex, and my cock hardens in response.

“I’ve never slept in the same bed with another person,” I murmur.

Her only answer is a quiet huff that isn’t a snore but isn’tnota snore.

I draw her more tightly against my body. I won’t give her up simply because I acquired her affection through planning, rather than organic means. This thing between us is real, and it would have happened sooner or later, with or without those shares as an added benefit.

---