Page 42 of Jake and Conner
"None," Conner said firmly.
Relief washed through me so completely I almost felt like a different human being from one second to the next, a lighter one. "Great," I said, even though the word fell short of conveying what I was really feeling. I didn't know how to put my joy into words.
Conner wasn't getting cold feet!
We might actually be getting back together!
Sure, we still had all sorts of disagreements to work through, but I was fairly optimistic that we could do it. There was only one more thing I needed to know.
"You didn't come here just because of your heat?"
Conner shook his head. "It... certainly played a part, I'm not going to deny that, but it wasn't the whole reason." He looked down at his plate as if considering a difficult problem, then he looked up again. "I was really impressed with you at the cabin."
"At the cabin?"
"Yeah, when things started to go out of control and you..."
"I dragged you in the shower?" I ventured a guess at what Conner was trying to say. Even just the memory of the cold shower made me shiver a little. At the time, though, it had seemed like my only option.
"You could have taken advantage of the situation and I wouldn't have blamed you if you had. I was kind of throwing myself at you and I know how hard it must have been for you to resist."
He was right about that. It had been incredibly hard. All the time I was walking toward the shower, a fairly large part of my hormone doused brain was protesting my actions. I'd waited so long to hold Conner in my arms again. Doing anything to make him break away had seemed insane, especially when I was inhaling the sweet, sweet scent of his heat.
But I couldn't have sex with him while I knew that it wasn't what he wanted. My parents had raised me better than that.
"You did the right thing," Conner said. "Despite everything. I think you've really grown a lot over the past few years." He gave me a soft smile. "I like the person you've grown into."
"You're making it sound like you didn't like me before," I pointed out, even as his words warmed my heart.
"That's not what I wanted to say. You know I liked you before too, but we've always had our differences and sometimes I think we just weren't mature enough to deal with them. Not just you, me too. I know I have a tendency to dig my heels in and that I can have a one-track mind. I want to see if these more grown-up versions of ourselves can make this work, though. I've missed you," he admitted.
I reached across the table to envelop his hand with my own. "I've missed you too." And I'd missed the feeling of his hand in mine, where it belonged.
"I want to take things slow," Conner said. "If we can."
"How slow?" was all I asked because I was willing to do pretty much anything if it meant I could keep holding on to his hand in the future.
"I'm not sure," Conner said. "But I don't want to dive in head-first only to realize we're still standing at the shallow end of the pool."
I nodded. "Okay. I get it. So you want to take your pre-work shower by yourself."
Conner smiled. "I'm not saying that. I just think that we need to work on our relationship bit by bit. I'm not going to move in with you next week, and we're not getting married next month, and we're not having a baby this year."
"That's okay with me." I would never try to rush him into anything ever again. "I can wait."
"I know you've been trying to show me that." Conner stroked a finger along the top of my hand in a way that made my skin tingle pleasantly. "And I'll try to make more time for you."
"Yeah?"
"Promise," Conner said. "I could drop by after work today."
I grimaced. "As much as I'd love that, I'm working from tonight until tomorrow night."
Conner chuckled. "Now it's you who's working too much."
"I'll make time just as soon as I'm off shift."
"Okay." Conner got up from the table and I rose as well. "You can come by my place."
