“Here she is,” the kid said, sliding a brand-new phone toward me. “It’s all set up and in the case. If you need any help downloading your old contacts from the cloud, we’ll be happy to help you. Your new number is written inside the box.”
Baffled, tired, hungry, a little furious, and a lot confused, I stared down at the phone, then up at Knox.
“Thanks,” Knox said to Ben, then handed me the phone.
The case had sparkly daisies on it. “You got me a phone?”
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
I let him pull me out of the store, remembering at the door to give Ben a wave and a “thank you.”
We were halfway to the arcade when my brain started connecting the dots. “You walked me all over this damn mall without complaining just to wear me out so I’d be too tired to fight you on the phone, didn’t you?”
“Burgers, sushi, or pizza?” he asked.
“Burgers. Knox?”
He kept on walking.
“Knox!” I poked him in the shoulder to get his attention.
When he looked down at me, he wasn’t smiling and he didn’t look smug. “You needed a phone. I got you one. Don’t make this into a thing.”
“You call me needy. You yell at me for working at your bar and tell me the only part of me worth spending time with is my body. Then you show up on my shopping trip uninvited and buy me underwear and a really expensive phone.”
“That about sums it up, minus the only part of you worth spending time with.”
“Are you always this…this inconsistent? This confusing?”
He stopped walking and looked down at me. “No, Naomi. I’m not always this fucking inconsistent. And I blame you. I don’t want to be into you. I don’t want to spend an entire day wandering around a goddamn mall and fighting traffic for you. I sure as hell don’t want to watch you try on underwear. But I also don’t want you home alone when there’s some guy back in Knockemout looking for you.”
Uh-oh.
“Some guy? Who is it?”
“Dunno. Justice and Wraith are taking care of it. They’ll call Nash in if they need to,” he said grimly.
“What do you mean ‘taking care of it’?” I had visions of bodies and tarps and duct tape.
“Don’t worry about it.”
I started laughing and kept right on going. I couldn’t help it. I’d spent the last four years in a relationship where I took care of everything. Every dinner reservation. Every vacation. Every load of laundry. Every grocery run.
Here I was in town for less than two weeks, and the grumpy guy who mostly hated me had just taken care of me.
Maybe someday I’d find a guy who both liked me and was willing to share the burden of taking care. Or maybe I would just end up alone like Tina had always predicted.
“You having some kind of breakdown? ’Cause I sure as hell have better things to do than watch that.”
“Oh, good,” I said, smothering my hysteria. “Grumpy Knox is back. What does this guy look like?”
“According to Justice, he looks like some dude named Henry Golding.”
“Henry Golding the hot actor or Henry Golding some local biker?” It was a very important distinction.
“I don’t know any Henry Golding biker. But this guy showed up at the cafe asking for you. Justice said he about lost it when he saw your sister’s mug shot behind the register.”
I was never going to live this down.