Page 48 of Make the Play

“I want you to eat with me.”

“Okay. What ya got for us, Corie girl?” I pull my face from her neck. She tries to stand, and I hold on just a few seconds longer before I release her, letting her move to sit next to me.

“Egg white whole grain English muffin with cheese and bacon, and a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel for me.” She smiles as she reaches into the bag and hands me my sandwich.

“Thank you.” Leaning over, I press a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“Maybe I should bring you breakfast every day. That’s quite the greeting.”

“It was too long,” I say, unwrapping my sandwich to take a bite.

“What was too long?”

“Between kissing you. Far too long,” I grumble.

She smiles, and her beautiful green eyes sparkle with happiness. “It wasn’t even twenty-four hours.”

“I know, but it’s been months denying that I wanted to kiss you. Months of wishing I could, so yeah, even if it was less than twenty-four hours, it was too long.”

“I guess we should figure out how to make up for lost time.” She smiles shyly.

“I get you all day, right?”

“You do. Landry was still in bed when I left. I left a note for him, letting him know Sloane and I were having a girls’ day.”

“So, when do you have to go home?”

She shrugs. “I don’t have a curfew or anything. I’m an adult. I can stay out as long as I want.”

“So, what I’m hearing is that you’re spending all day and night here,” I say, taking another bite of my sandwich.

“Is that what you want?”

“I want to kiss you. I want to hold you and not feel like I’m breaking ten laws in the process. I want to spend time with you without being under a microscope of eyes watching us.”

“Let’s just take it one step at a time.”

“One breath, one second, one minute, one hour, one day at a time,” I mumble.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, just something my parents used to say growing up.”

“Are you close to your parents?”

“I am. We have this huge extended family that’s not family by blood, but they might as well be. It was a lot of fun growing up, always having a lot of people around for pretty much everything.”

“I always wondered what it would be like to have a big, loud family. It was just Landry, me, and our parents. Our dad died when I was five and Landry was twelve.”

“Landry’s told me a little about that. What a tragic accident.”

“It was. Mom was both parents to us, and then we lost her.”

“Another freak accident.” I reach over and place my hand on her knee, squeezing gently.

“Yeah, I mean, not as freak as getting a steel beam dropped on you from three stories up, but the knee surgery was supposed to be in and out. We never could have anticipated the blood clot complication.” She sucks in a breath and wipes at her eyes.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

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