t.”
She stopped and stared at him, angling her head a bit as if trying to puzzle him out. “I didn’t call you, either.”
“Why?”
She looked over at her small living room and then back at him. “To be honest, I needed some time to think. And I’ve been painting. A lot.”
He let out a breath and some of the tension tightening his body. “I’ve been writing, too.”
“I guess our trip was inspiring.” Her eyes lit with a bit of the fire he loved, and he was transported back to the hotel room. The way she looked, tasted, sounded.
“So...”
“So I’m not the kind of woman who has to be called hours after being dropped off. I’m not that insecure, Bran. And we both agreed this is not...a real relationship. We want different things. Besides, I have no claim on you or your time. I told myself I was just going to enjoy what time we had.”
Her words should have made him feel better, as they essentially let him off the hook. But somehow they didn’t, and he couldn’t pinpoint why.
“Had,” he said quietly. “Past tense?”
“That’s up to you.” She moved forward. “It got to be too much for you, didn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” He paused and ran his hand through his hair. “It’s just a lot. I’m dealing with a lot. You’re the first woman I’ve been with since Jennie. And yeah, tonight was the first time I’ve held Rose. I’m moving back into the world of the living, but it’s hard. I’m not sure I have it in me to navigate...nuance. With a relationship.”
She nodded as if she understood completely, but how could she?
“Would it help if we set ground rules?”
He gestured to the small table and chairs. “Can we sit to discuss this? I feel weird standing here, as if we’re facing off.”
She obliged him by taking a seat, but angled her chair so that their knees bumped slightly. It helped that she was touching him, actually. Like an anchor to keep him grounded, when he could very easily be overwhelmed.
He could still smell the scent of baby, and his brain remembered a past life he couldn’t access anymore. And never would again.
If anything, the past month had taught him that he could move forward without them.
“We both agreed this is a summer thing. That I’ll be going back to Chicago and my own life, and you’ll be here or wherever else you call home.” She folded her hands in her lap. “And since we really do like each other, I think we also agree that there might be a little bit of fear that we’ll get too attached to each other.”
“Like?” He lifted an eyebrow.
She smiled gently. “Okay, more than like. I care about you, Bran, and I think you care about me. And neither of us wants to get hurt, or be responsible for hurting the other person.”
“True.”
“So, ground rules. I’ll go first. No more overnights.”
He blinked. He’d thought she was going to say no sex, but she’d said no staying over. He nodded, thinking of how the intimacy of waking up together made things so much more complicated. “Agreed.” Then he added a condition of his own. “No declarations.”
“Declarations?”
Bran wasn’t sure how to word this one. “I mean, we care about each other. But we both agree that this isn’t going to turn into love. I’m not ready for that and like you said, we want different things. So no declarations of love.”
“Absolutely. No danger there.”
It made him pause for a moment, how quickly she’d said “no danger there.” Again, he knew he should be relieved, so why was there this nagging feeling that something was off?
He pushed the feeling aside and ticked off another one on his fingers. “Space to create, and no getting upset when either of us is unavailable because we’re working.”
She grinned at him. “That’s an easy one.”