Page 55 of Just A Little Magic

Owen looked mighty pleased with himself as he sat across the table from me. I reached across, took one of his hands, and entwined our fingers.

“That means no freaked-out emails from you about how the deadline I made is stupid. Love that for me,” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” Owen said laughing, “there is no way I will promise that. Who am I if I’m not panicking about a deadline? It’s what I do.”

“Hmm, true story. Fine, but you have to limit it to twice a day.”

“Deal, but you should come with me when I go. I’m going to do a progress check and we are going to finalize some of the color choices. They seriously might be the easiest clients I’ve ever dealt with.”

“Easier than Jakob and Reed?”

“Oh my God, yes. Jakob always comes across as so sweet, and he is, but that man knows exactly what he wants. Lucky for me, he has great taste, which is helpful when being dictated to about where to put the couch.”

“Sure, I’ll invite myself along with you. They probably won’t mind.”

“Actually, they won’t mind at all because they asked me to ask you to come, and I forgot to do it earlier.”

“In that case, it’s a date.”

Owen’s cheeks flushed a pretty pink. “Is it though? A date?”

“I want it to be one.”

The color on Owen’s cheeks deepened, and the eye contacthe’d given me disappeared instantly. Suddenly, whatever was in his lap was the most fascinating thing ever.

“I want my month, but I want you to want me to have it.”

Owen blew out a resigned sigh and withdrew his hand from mine. He wrapped his arms around himself and huffed out another breath. “It’s not that I don’t want the month, but I know how it will end, and that’s what worries me. If we lose us, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Owen, I told you what my first thought was when I met you. Do you want to know my second?”

“That you wanted me to move my crap so you could study?”

“No, you started talking to me, and I was a goner. Back then, I thought we might end up in a different sort of relationship, but when I returned from that trip with my parents, everything had changed. I wasn’t going to push it, so I took what you were willing to offer. You only wanted friendship, so that’s what I accepted and kept.”

After I said my piece, I sat back and let Owen process my words. He was a man who didn’t make rash decisions. He usually liked to mull things over before he made a decision. He always said he regretted the decisions when he didn’t take the time to give them the thought they deserved. I’d always secretly hoped part of that philosophy was because of how quickly he shut down whatever possibility had existed between us. Likely wishful thinking, but I’d had more than ten years to grasp at straws.

When Owen still hadn’t spoken, I figured there was nothing else to lose. “What changed after that?”

“It wasn’t only one thing.”

“Could you explain one of them?”

“I thought you were out of my league.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I was some poor kid from central Washington who had the dumb idea that he would major in art in the big city of Seattle. That’s a rich people major because we don’t have that luxury. I know you’ve made the family business way more successful than your dad did, but you started with money.”

He looked up at me for an acknowledgment of that truth. I gave it to him, and he continued, “I knew you had a little crush on me, but I didn’t want to be tossed when you found someone who could keep up with you. Friendship had a lesser risk of that. I never told you how we ended up out here, right?”

I shook my head, and he continued, “You remember that both my parents are from Salem, right? And you know my dad brought us here for a job and then ditched us. My mom had a life in Massachusetts that she never got back. She had a good job, and it was gone. She’s doing okay now, but it’s not doing what she loved.”

“Jesus, Owen, I had no idea you felt like that. Did I do something for you to be worried or was it a general thing?”

“When you are poor like we were, you don’t have the luxury of waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Owen paused for a shaky breath before he continued, “You told me about your plans to expand your dad’s company and that you wanted me to be a part of it. It was literally everything I would ever want handed to me. If we were dating and broke up, poof, that dream would be gone.”

When I started to protest, Owen’s hand came up to cut me off. “Yeah, yeah, of course, you wouldn’t be the kind of guy to do that, but how could I take the chance? Then, when I figured out you weren’t that guy, the ship had sailed on any possibility of being more than friends.”

---