Did he just say he needs me?
God, why does that feel so nice to hear?
Greg’s eyes catch outside, and he stands a little straighter, giving me more space and telling me without words that David is on his way back inside.
“So,” he says, extending his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
I stare at his hand like it’s a bomb that will detonate the moment I touch it, but somehow, for some unknown reason, I find my hand slipping into its embrace.
His fingers curl around mine, and with one strong pump, we agree.
“Deal,” I whisper. “But,” I add, holding up a finger once he releases my hand. “I can change my mind. At any point. No questions asked.”
“No questions asked,” he agrees, holding up his hands in surrender. But then he grins, devilish and sexy as hell. “I’ll leave the key fob on the table by the door.”
I roll my eyes again, but as David opens the sliding back door, I mouth thank you.
Greg nods, a soft smirk on his lips.
“Alright,” David announces with a clap of his hands and a dramatic whiff of the air. “Let’s eat.”
CHAPTER SIX
GREG
“I don’t know,” Amanda says for the tenth time, crossing her arms and tucking her legs under her on the couch. “This is hard.”
It’s been a week since I’ve seen her — a week that dragged by at the pace of a doped-up turtle for me. I couldn’t even try to deny the fact that I was excited she’d agreed to my little proposal. I was anxious to get started, but then work got crazy and before I knew it, an entire week had gone by before she texted me.
We doing this or what?
This is exactly why I need her as much as she needs me for this. Because without her pushing me, I’d be content to spend all my life inside those hospital walls.
“Come on, it’s not that hard. Just say something you’ve always wanted to do but never have.”
“If it’s so easy, then you go first.”
I frown at that, tapping my pen on the empty page I have open in one of her notebooks.
Then, I snap my fingers, jumping up from the couch. “I think this living room is suffocating our creative energy. Come on, we need a better place to think.”
Before she can argue, I grab her hand and tug her up off the couch, appreciating the view of her in leggings and a thin, long-sleeve shirt — so thin I can see every curve underneath it — for just a moment before I’m dragging her toward the stairs.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“You know where.”
She stops dead at that, pulling her hand from mine. When I turn, her eyes are wide, lips parted.
“Uh… I don’t… I don’t think we should go to my bedroom.”
I smirk, leaning a hip against the stair railing. “That’s not where I was heading. But I mean, if you do your best thinking there, I can certainly be persuaded.”
Her cheeks flush. “Oh… well, then where?”
“You’ll see,” I say, and then I grab her hand and lead the way.
I know this house like I grew up in it, and in a way, I did — at least for about a year and a half. I slept here more nights than I slept at my own house. I helped clean, helped cook, helped in the garden.
I never did have a place that felt like home, but if I had to name something close to it, it’d be this house.
I sneak a peek back at Amanda when I lead us into what used to be David’s room, and now seems like half storage and half old workout equipment.
“I don’t know if that roof is strong enough to support us anymore,” she says when I drop her hand long enough to open the window. “I haven’t had it replaced in almost ten years. And if you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly as… light as I used to be.”
She kind of curls in on herself then, and I immediately want to kick Josh square in his balls for ever making her feel like her curves are anything less than a goddamn masterpiece.
I also want to tell her she’s beautiful, that her body is perfect, that I would literally give up my MD to get my hands on her and show her just how much I appreciate that body.
But I promised not to cross that line again.
“We’ll be fine,” I assure her, and I climb out first before offering my hand back to help her.
I felt like a kid at work today, thinking about Amanda and the list all day long. I couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital and catch an Uber over here. Getting her to agree to this harebrained idea wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be, and it gave me a false sense of hope that I knew was far more dangerous than climbing out onto an old roof.
“Okay,” I say once we’re settled, balancing the notebook in my lap again. “I’ll go first. Kayaking.”
“Oh! Yes! I’ve always wanted to do that!”
“I heard there’s a great place about an hour and a half north of here. A spring,” I say, writing down kayaking as number one on our list. “Now, your turn.”
Amanda sighs, pulling her long hair over one shoulder and playing with the ends of it as she looks out over her backyard. The sun is already dipping away, my least favorite part about the fall being that we lose daylight in the evening so quickly.
“I want to get high.”
I choke on a laugh, eyebrows popping into my hairline.
“Hey! No laughing aloud!”
“I’m sorry! I just… you surprised me with that one.”
She grins then, shrugging. “Well, I never did any of that. I mean, I was pregnant at fifteen, remember? I missed out on all the partying and doing stupid things as a kid. And now that it’s practically legal everywhere… well, I don’t know. I think it could be fun.”
I frown, writing down her idea as number two on the list as her words sink in. I met Amanda when she seemed so happy in her life, when even on the worst days, she seemed like she knew what she wanted and had it all together. And when Josh started showing his true colors when I was around, when I realized it was all a show, I was always focused on who she was in that moment, on how she could keep above water with everything going on.
I never stopped to think about who she was as a teenager, about how her hopes and dreams must have taken a hard left turn when she found out about David.
What would I have done if it were me, if a girl I’d been intimate with got pregnant before we were even old enough to drive?
“Were you scared?”
Amanda frowns, looking at me.
“When you found out you were pregnant.”
At that, she smiles, letting out a long exhale through flat lips. “Among other things, yes. I was scared. Angry with myself. Terrified of my future.” She swallows. “Sad.”
Pain zips through my chest at the sight of her, of those warm eyes of hers dulled from a memory of the past.
“But I knew in my heart that it happened for a reason. I think everything does. After a while, that fear turned into excitement.” She pauses. “Of course, my parents didn’t understand that side of my emotions at all. They wanted me to be scared. They wanted me to…”
She swallows, the word too hard to say, but we both know exactly what they wanted her to do.