“I’ll grab the pizza.” I kiss her and shift her legs off my lap, standing up and walking to the door, zipping my pants as I go. I check the window and confirm there’s no boogie man outside. Just a delivery kid in glasses with a nose ring. There’s a story there. I just don’t want to hear it. Regardless of the harmless kitten holding our pizzas, I still want my damn guns and knives, which are in Candace’s kitchen drawer where I put them when I arrived for good reason. I didn’t want to freak her the fuck out. I open the door, grab our boxes, and send the kid on his way with a generous tip.
As much as I need to process what I now know, I don’t linger by the door. I return to the living room. Candace is doing the same, returning from the kitchen with a couple of drinks in her hands. And damn, once again, all I can think is she’s so fucking beautiful, her dark hair a mussed-up sexy mess that is all the sexier because I made it that way. We sit down on the sofa and I open the box, cheese bubbling around pepperoni. “I missed this place.”
“I missed it with you,” she says, sounding uncharacteristically shy.
Damn if I don’t swell with emotions that I didn’t even know I was capable of anymore. Over pizza. But it’s pizza with her. It’s memories with her. “I’m damn glad you did,” I say, brushing fingers over her cheek, a moment between us that is all kinds of snap, crackle and pop. “If you keep looking at me like that I’m going to eat you instead.”
Her cheeks heat and she grabs a slice of pizza. “Pizza first.”
“You’re barely convincing me,” I warn her but I cave and grab a slice of pizza. I even change the subject from me between her legs, to her throughout the years. “Tell me about your job, baby. Have you built all you dreamed you would?”
“I still have a few things on the list. But I’ve made a real name for myself in military facilities.”
“Tell me about it,” I urge, and I want to hear. I want to know what I missed. I want to know what I should have been here to experience with her.
And she doesn’t deny me my wish.
Her eyes light and she launches into a story about her first project and how it became career-making. Listening to her, I remember how her excitement about her career, and life in general, used to take me away from my troubles at home. How she made me want to wake up just to do this thing called life with her. “I’d like to see some of your work. All of your work. Which one is your favorite?”
“A building in New York City.”
“Really? I live in New York. Which one?”
“The Penson Tower,” she says, but her excitement is gone. Her expression tightens, right along with her voice. “You live in New York City?”
I’ve reminded her of the life I’ve lived without her, the one she thinks I chose over her. “Come there with me. Show me your building.”
“I don’t know.” She looks down. “That feels impossible now.”
I shut the pizza box we’ve all but emptied while talking. “It’s not.” I turn to face her, and catch her chin, angling her gaze to mine. “I will handle lying Gabe.”
“It’s not just about him. It’s about us. You came home and it wasn’t here.”
“I was never home, until I came back to you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I had reasons. I needed to protect you. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t protecting you at all. So I say again: come to New York City with me. I’ll take care of Gabriel.”
“He’s careful. He’ll be hard to take down.”
“Not careful enough,” I assure her.
“You can’t just kill him.” She tries to get up and I catch her hand.
“Is that all you think I am? That’ I’m a cold-blooded killer? Is that why you’re not saying yes to coming to New York with me?”
“No. No, it’s not.”
I don’t believe her. “The killer comment, Candace, it says otherwise.”
“I didn’t mean that. I just meant—he’s high profile.”
“If he wasn’t, I could just kill him, right?”
“What are you doing, Rick?” she asks, her tone earnest. “What are you trying to prove right now? Because I don’t deserve the way you’re coming at me right now.”
“You’re right. You’re right.” I grab her hands and kiss them. “You’re so fucking right. You don’t deserve any of this.” Or me, I think. That’s been the problem all along.
“Don’t do that. Don’t start dividing us already. You’re being defensive. You’re creating a reaction in me that’s not my own, deciding for me what my thoughts must be. You’re making sure goodbye feels right again.”