think they must have grown them. Isn’t that sweet?”
“It is,” Dani had to agree.
Normally, this kind of thing would set off all sorts of
alarms. This looked very much like attachment. She’d slept
with Emily and Emily was staying with her. They were fake
married, except the marriage was real in the eyes of the law, so
Dani couldn’t run. Not that she was a runner. She’d been
forced to move on all her life. It was a general rule that she
couldn’t let herself depend on another person or even be
friends. She knew she was past that now, she was an adult in
charge of her own life, but old habits were hard to break, and
Emily doing something nice for Dani caused her heart to beat
faster, but it was equal parts fear as it was happiness. In the
past, this would have been dangerous. This would have hurt
her deeply.
This will hurt me deeply, because even if I don’t run, it still
isn’t real.
Dani knew she’d gone too far with Emily already. All day
she’d been planning how to tell her that. She’d rehearsed the
words in her head all afternoon, and no matter how lame they
sounded, she knew she had to say them. They died on her
tongue as Emily walked over to the stove and took out a
casserole dish.
“It’s shredded chicken, pasta, cheese, and red peppers. I
normally don’t cook anything, so I had to look it all up, but I
think I got it right.” Emily inhaled as she set the casserole dish
on top of the oven. Dani’s red oven mitts looked adorable with
Emily’s yellow blouse and tight skinny jeans. Dani nearly
groaned when she saw just how tight those jeans were,
cupping Emily’s shapely bottom and defining the sleek