Page 69 of Hot Response
“Well, for one thing, I haven’t met her. Forget everybody else.Ihaven’t met her and you’ve been talking about her since before Cait and I started dating.”
“She gets anxious about meeting everybody, and we’re taking it slow.”
“Have you done a Google search on her? Facebook? Anything?”
“There was nothing, really. And she doesn’t have a Facebook account.”
“That right there is sketchy enough. How many women don’t have a Facebook account?”
“She’s really private.” Grant tapped his hockey stick against the toe of his skate. “I know it sounds weird when we’re talking like this, but it’s not when I’m with her. She’s just really private and she’s skittish about our relationship. She’s warming up to me, though. You’ll see how awesome she is when you meet her.”
“I’d like to. Especially if you’re thinking about dropping theL-word.”
“Have you ever said it to a woman?”
“No.” Gavin paused, then lifted one shoulder. “I mean, back in school, maybe. When you’re young, you fall in love every week. But since I grew up and it became more about finding somebody you want to settle down with for the rest of your life and less about getting to second base? No, I haven’t said it.”
“What about Cait?”
What about Cait?It was a question he asked himself a lot. “We’re getting there. Pretty quickly.”
“Good. I think you guys are the real deal.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know. Just seeing you together.” Grant shrugged. “It’s obvious you’re into each other, and it’s just natural. Like yougeteach other and you fit. It’s hard to explain. Gut instinct, I guess.”
Gavin wished it was that easy. He wished there was a way to simplyknow, without a doubt, that he and Cait were meant to be together forever. He was starting to believe they might be, but he felt himself holding back. If he started pushing her for more, would she feel as if he was pulling her away from her mother?
If he thought about it too much—and he did—he always ended up frustrated by his inability to know the right thing to do.
“Iwasthinking about asking her to move in with me,” he said.
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Grant started to grin, but then it faded. “What do you meanwas?”
“We were talking about whether we wanted kids, like in a vague way, and she said by the time she found her own place and got settled enough to think about a family, it would be a while. So I guess she’s not in the same place I am in that regard.”
“Maybe she was giving you an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, you don’t need your own place because you can move in with me’ and you blew it. Again.”
Gavin hadn’t really thought about that possibility, but he didn’t think that was the case. Thinking back, there hadn’t been any sense of hinting or nudging in her voice. Just a statement of fact. “I don’t know. I’ll probably bring it up again soon, though, since I think about it pretty much all the damn time.”
“What about her family?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping Diane’s in a place where she can handle it and, to be honest, she has to see it coming. Cait spends as much time at my place as she can, and she’s been spending the night more often.”
“That sounds promising.”
“Yeah, I guess it does.” He grinned at Grant. “Maybe we both found the right ones this time.”
“Lucky bastards.”
“Fucking right.”
“Hey,” Scott called from the ice. “You two gonna play hockey or do you want to start knitting some shit over there?”
