Page 92 of Chasing You

I expected some big reaction. Some confusion or something. But that’s not what I get. I get the slightest furrow in his brow, and a softening of his eyes, and an “Are you okay?”

A rogue tear falls. “I don’t know.”

“That’s okay.” He grabs my hand.

“When I left your room at the hospital, Sofia found me in the hall. My cramps were really bad. She started asking me all of these questions and I…” I just shrug as best as I can, running my fingers over his as another tear slides sideways down my cheek before landing on the pillow beneath my head.

“Do you have options?”

“Yeah,” I shrug, “but I don’t know if I like any of them.”

He nods, his grip on my hand tightening ever so slightly. “That’s okay too.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s not. I need to decide what I’m going to do about it.”

“Okay, what are the options?” he asks. I shake my head. “Sorry, you don’t have to tell me?—”

“No,” I interrupt. “It’s not that. There’s no one else I want to talk to. Just you.” All I want to do is talk it out with Miles. To hear him tell me it’s all going to be okay.

“The most common thing to help the symptoms is hormonal birth control. It’s really the only option, actually.”

He frowns. “You never wanted to go on that.”

Another tear. “I know. But it might be the best thing for me,” I say. “There’s other tests but…” I just shake my head.

Miles cups the side of my face. “Everything is going to be okay. You’ll make the right decision. You just have to do what feels right to you, and if you don’t know what that is yet, then you can take the time to figure it out, okay?”

“I feel like I should be getting onto it, you know?”

“Pressuring yourself into making a decision isn’t going to help you make the right one. Take your time, baby.”

That’s the second time he’s called me that, and the second time the butterflies in my stomach have gone wild—today at least. They were fluttering around for hours the night of the al fresco movie, even more so when his hand crept over the top of mine, and I let it.

I nod. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Now here,” he pulls the bag of candy up in front of me. “These are the best form of treatment for anything.”

A smile teases my lips. I reach into the bag and grab two more, shoving them into my mouth and letting the sweet tang explode on my tongue.

I close my eyes and realize that since Miles has been here, the cramps have lessened. They’re not gone, but they’ve faded. Maybe the best form of treatment for me is him.

“Let me heat this up for you.”

I open my eyes to see Miles walking over to the kitchen, a wheat bag in hand. I can’t help but admit that I like seeing him in my space.

“I like your place,” he says. “It’s cozy.”

“It’s a shoebox.”

He turns the microwave on before swivelling around to look at me. “It’s cute.”

“It’s a mess,” I say, only now noticing how much of my shit I left lying around. But to be fair, I wasn’t expecting visitors.

“Well, that’s not really surprising to me. Somehow, I always found something of yours lying in the most random spots at my place in Sorrento. Lip gloss under the fridge. A bra hanging over the kitchen stool. A packet of cookies by the door…”

“A snack for the road is always necessary,” I say, and the way his smile beams across his face sends warmth straight to my core. “And the other one, well I’m not solely to blame for that.” His gaze deepens with desire, and I almost blanch beneath it.

The microwave beeps interrupting our reminiscing, Miles’s attention switching from me to the wheat pack.

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