Page 57 of Fly Back to Me
Blood rushes straight to my cheeks, my skin heating at the weight of his promising stare. That ring-clad middle finger begs me to caress it, and hot desire settles at my core.
“I’m an accountant.”
“Does it fulfill you?” he prods.
I barely nod. “Sometimes.”
He drops his hand, crossing both forearms on the tabletop again. “‘Sometimes’ isn’t a ‘yes.’”
When I raise my coffee cup to my lips, I say, “‘Sometimes’ is all some people get.”
“Not if you want something bad enough.”
I swallow thickly past the vanilla foam, resting my cup on the ivory surface between us. “If I asked you if your life fulfilled you, would your answer match your philosophy?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
He sinks into the chair, burying both hands in the pockets of his jacket. His gaze never cowers from mine, steadying over my face in a fierce commitment. Letting me know that my inquiries stop here.
At first, his response burns like a shot of whiskey down my throat. Tense body language barricades his feelings, preventing me from accessing them. But then his answer quickly smooths out on the end. As bitter as his raised guard is, his short answer serves me with hope.
A chance.
On the other side of that, it’s a poignant pill to swallow. If he was over the moon in love with the woman he’s with, I could bow to her without hesitation. But to surrender all our “what ifs” for a relationship that he’s not completely invested in? That’s a sting of the sharpest blade.
My eyes soar over his frame, a curdling in my stomach berating my audacity. The nerve I have to justify breaking up a relationship, all the while Cade sits before me with the barest clue.
“I think I should get going.” I stand, stuffing my paperback inside my tote bag.
But just as I’m putting my jacket on, Cade rises from his seat. “I’ll walk you.”
I shake my head, pinning him with a subdued smile before draping my bag over my shoulder. “No, you really don’t have to.”
“I don’t,” he echoes. “But you also don’t like walking to your car alone. Your ‘don’t’ beats my ‘don’t.’”
My teeth gently dig into my bottom lip, and I avert myattention to scoop up my cinnamon treat. “Not for nothing, but who comes to a coffee shop without buying a drink?” I tease as I wrap my snack in the paper napkin.
I roll my eyes just as the corner of his mouth tips up, and then we’re trailing away. “Someone who’s a glutton for punishment, I suppose,” he tosses back.
We make our way toward the front of the café, and I request a to-go bag from a barista. When I drop the half-eaten roll inside, I walk up to the “Hello Board” with Cade on my tail.
Pointing to it with a tiny grin, I say, “I’m gonna suggest this to my supervisor at my annual review. Maybe that’s what my job needs.”
And I’m out the doors.
Cade
If she’s the one, does she know how lucky she is?
My fingers linger under my chin for a moment, the cool metal of my ring battling the hot tingle along my back.
This should be the reaction of a single man who just met a beautiful woman. Not the response of a committed man.
My focus zooms out from the yellow paper on the cork, and then I pad over to the exit. When I swing the glass door away from me, Olivia’s already traveling a few feet down the sidewalk.
“You really don’t have to walk me,” she says when my body drifts beside her.
A ribbon of her peony scent coils around my body, driving my hands into my jeans pockets. With the way her soft curlscascade and bounce past her shoulders, I’m a pitiful breath away from twisting them around my fingers.
