Page 78 of Give & Take

“No, you don’t.” Lana stands up and looks like she’s going to come over here, then stops herself. She presses a hand against her collar, then drops it again. “What I mean is, I don’t share my writing. Ever. Like I said, I’m not actually a writer. I’m a reader. I love books, and I know my writing is nowhere near on par with published books and—” She cuts herself off. “I just don’t open up that easily, Raphael. You’re…Icantrust you won’t laugh at me like Mike did. But I can’t just share my deepest, most vulnerable parts with someone who’s just…passing through my life.”

So there it is. It’s not about me being the nanny anymore.

“That’s a bullshit excuse to not open up to someone, Lana.”

“How is it bullshit? Tell me I’m wrong?”

“You’re wrong.”

“You’re not taking off at the end of the summer?”

“Of course I am.”

Something in her face shifts. I can’t quite tell what it is, but I don’t love it.

I stand up. I did actually come in here for a purpose. Picking up my laundry basket, I say, “I just mean you don’t have to limit how much of yourself you show people, you know, on the off chance you might get hurt. What the hell is life for if you’re not experiencing everything you possibly can?”

“Easy for you to say,” she says, her pretty little jaw working. “You have your whole life ahead of you.”

“And you’re what, halfway in the grave? You’re forty, Lana. Not eighty.”

“I’ll be forty-one in three weeks.”

I hate it when she does this; points out how different we are. How stating her age somehow makes her less desirable to me. “That’s how birthdays usually happen, one after the other.”

The way she’s looking at me, so defiantly, I want to walk right over there and show her just how little I care about our age difference. That I meant what I said to her date that night on the porch. She was beautiful then, she’s beautiful now, she’ll be beautiful until the day I fucking die.

I flex my hands over the handles of my laundry basket, feeling annoyed that I’m holding it. I turn to slideit into the laundry room, just to get it out of my sight. To give me a spare second to make sure I think carefully about what I want to say.

But when I head that way, about to drop it, she says, “Mike used to do that, you know.”

I frown. “Do what?”

“Leave, in the middle of an argument. He’d just get up and walk like a?—”

She doesn’t finish that sentence, because I drop my basket of laundry onto the floor again and walk back to her. I don’t go back to my stool. I go to her side of the island and set my hands on her arm rests, my face close to hers.

Lana’s eyes go wide, her pupils dilating. I hear the hitch in her breathing, see the pulse at her throat. Her tongue darts out of her mouth almost like it did when she was working. Only this time, she’s not working. She’s affected, by my proximity.

Good. She can see how it feels.

“Lana,” I say, my voice low. I wrap my hands over the arms of her chair, bracketing her in place. I take a step forward, into the space between her legs. Through that thin, worn material of her t-shirt, her nipples harden, and I have to bite back a groan.

Luckily, I’m still pissed at what she said.

“Do I look anything like your ex-husband?” I ask her.

Lana’s hands clench in her lap. She doesn’t answer, but I can see the fire in her eyes.

“Do I do anything remotely like him?”

She lets out a huff. “No.”

“He’s your ex and the father of your children. So Iwon’t use the words I want to for him. But Sunshine, don’t ever compare us again.”

Lana’s chin lifts. “That sounds like a threat.”

“It is,” I say. “For the record, I was going to drop that basket in the laundry room. Then I was going to come back and continue our conversation, eating up all those little glares and snappy words you love throwing at me. Either that or I was going to fuck you right here on this kitchen island.”

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