Page 47 of Lemon Crush

“Sorry.” He shook his head after less than a moment of thought. “It’s too much space for one man.”

“Exactly!” I emphasized the word with another splash of water, unwilling to analyze why I felt relief at his answer. If he’d said yes, it would have solved all my problems. “It’s too big a house for one person and it needs work. More so after tonight. Not to mention the fact that nothing good has happened since I moved in,so it might be a black pit in disguise. The place where everything I love goes to die.”

Mom. My health. My career. My social life. Merlin soon, if the vet was right.

Such a ray of sunshine.“Sorry, that got really dark, didn’t it?”

“Is it how you honestly feel?”

I shrugged. “Only some days. It isn’t the house’s fault that I’m having issues. It’s not like its sentient.”

He looked intrigued. “That would be cool.”

“No one says cool anymore.”

“I’m old enough to say whatever I want. A sentient house would make a cool story. I’d read it.”

“You can,” I told him with a smirk. “It’s been written about so often it’s practically its own genre now. There’s a husband-and-wife team who’ve perfected it with an Innkeeper series that sets the bar way too high for the rest of us. They have thecoolestaudiobooks too.”

“I’ll have to look them up. And no one says coolest anymore.”

I grinned as I let the water run through my fingers again. “Anyway, my best friend offered me a place with him in San Diego and it felt nice, you know? To be asked. To be wanted and have choices again.”

“This would be Chick, right?”

I stared at him. “How do you know his name?”

“I told you I read the newsletters.”

He must have. Mom had included several of the house parties he liked to throw in myAdventure Corner. “Yes, um. Chick. He’s got a beach house now with a lot of room. I could stay there until I decided what comes next.”

He was staring at me in silence. I couldn’t read his expression, but something about it tightened my throat. Was he judging me for abandoning the permanence here for temporary somewhere else?

Not that Chick would ever kick me out, but I knew before Isaid yes to him that it would only be a stopping point. He’d eventually find someone he wanted to share his life with. There was no doubt in my mind. The last thing I wanted to be was someone’s third wheel.

“Your turn again,” I told him, needing to break the tension. “Let’s go back to all the big changes you’re making. Thinking about leaving the team and buying a new house. Why now? And why didn’t you pull the trigger years ago?”

He winced. It was subtle, but I could see it. “I did, back when I was married for nine months. I turned it around and sold it when we separated and they moved away. It was too far from work and my family.”

Oh right. The ex-wife no one ever talked about. I’d fallen into a tub of ice cream for a month when I heard he’d gotten married. I’d also practiced all the fictional hexes I’d created on her. If she currently had facial warts or hemorrhoids? That was probably my doing. “They?”

He slid toward the deeper water, the shadows hiding his face. “She had a kid when we met. Cody. His school was why I bought the house where I did, about an hour from here. He’s a doctor in Arizona now. A good one, from what I hear.”

“You had a stepson?” How was it possible that I didn’t know something like that? Mom would have told me.

Wade looked pained. “He was ten at the time. Crazy smart, but really shy with new people, so she didn’t bring him around much. In the end, it was for the best. No one got too attached.”

Except for Wade.

“I was shocked when I heard about the divorce,” I said carefully. “You were never one for rushing into things. Or giving up on them.”

I’d always wondered what happened.

“If we’re beinghonest,” he said after a moment, “I ignored the warning signs. I wanted a family of my own and I thought, here’sthis beautiful woman I get along with, with a kid who looks at me like I’m a superhero. It felt easy. Simple. Ready-made. I thought the rest would work itself out with time.”

The rest? Meaning love?

I held my tongue, but he heard me as if I’d spoken out loud. “There’s nothing you could say I haven’t told myself a hundred times. It was a shit reason to get married. It was a disservice to all of us. I suppose that’s why her falling for someone else wasn’t that shocking.”

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