For a protracted moment, we hung in that limbo, watching each other as we stood at the edge I’d been so afraid of for so long. And there was nothing left to do, no ground left to rely on.
It was time to jump.
“Kash, nothing about this feels like a rebound. This isn’t a fling, not for me. I don’t know when it happened, when things changed. Maybe it was there from the start. Maybe I’ve just been too afraid to admit it.”
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t ever be afraid, not of me.”
“No, never of you. Afraid of losing you.” I swallowed a dry knot, meeting his gaze with all the strength I had in me. “I understand this isn’t what you proposed. You said the only risk was to the reboundee, but it’s not. You’ve told me time and again that this is a distraction, nothing more. So I understand if you say no, but I need to know. If I asked you for more, would you give it?”
A thundering heartbeat marked the time for him to draw a breath. “Lila, I’d give you anything you asked. I think you know that.”
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. “Even this? Even your heart?”
At that, he bestowed the full extent of his smile on me. “Especially that. All I ever wanted was you, any way I could get you. I wasn’t foolish enough to imagine you’d ever want anything more from me.”
“But why?” I asked, confused.
“Because …” He paused, eyes flicking beyond us to the crowd. “Because I’m not like you. I’m not like them.” He nodded to the dance floor. “I’m just a filthy, uneducated gardener who lives with his parents.”
“You think that’s all I care about?” I breathed, the echo of Natasha’s words in my ears.
“No, I know it’s not. But you date guys like Brock. He represents a life I can’t give you, a person I can never be.”
“But Kash, that’s exactly why I want you. Because you are nothing like them.”
For a moment, he watched me, something uncertain behind his eyes as he searched mine. “What do you want, Lila? What do you want us to be?”
The question jolted me, simple and straightforward as it was, and it gave me pause, pause that deepened the uncertainty in his eyes. So I said what was in my head without reservation.
“I don’t know what we are, what I want us to be, not exactly. All I know is that I want you, all of you.”
He stroked my hair, traced my face. “I didn’t think we’d ever get here, to this moment. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, but I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t know if you were ready for this. For me. For more.”
“I was. I am.” A pause. “I was going to, you know. I was going to tell you the day we planted Ophelia, but you said you’d be my rebound guy, and it broke my heart.”
“I wish you had.”
I watched him, thinking through all the missed opportunities, all the wasted time. “What do you want, Kash? Tell me so I can give it to you.”
“For you to be happy. That’s all.”
Sweet were those words, selfless and true, and I felt every one. “I am,” I said before kissing him to prove it.
The crowd behind us cheered. The balloons fell. The music started again.
But we didn’t notice and didn’t care as we kissed in a dark alcove.
And I didn’t let him go until I was certain he knew he was mine.
20
A Certain Rightness
KASH
I could have kissed her forever.
We hung there in time, suspended and oblivious to anything beyond our hearts and our wishes. But despite what we wanted, the clock began to tick once more. She was called away, and I was left there to consider my luck as the night went on.
Fortunately for all of us, without incident.
Natasha was too hammered and busy with her friends to bother with Lila, and Brock stuck close enough to her that it bordered on lewd. And I mean that honestly—there was a point when they were grinding on the dance floor that I couldn’t be certain he wasn’t actually fucking her.
But with the lion’s share of her duties done, I did mine—I kept her back to the peep show and her eyes on me.
The clock mercifully struck two, and the house lights glared everyone toward the exit. As the stumbling, chattering crowd moved in that direction, Natasha climbed into the DJ booth, stole his mic, and instructed everyone to meet them at an afterhours club a few blocks away. When she dropped the microphone, the feedback nearly deafened us all, but she was unfazed, strutting her way to the exit with surprising grace for someone so tanked.
As she and Brock passed, she caught sight of Lila and shifted, beelining in our direction, her face darkening. She was looking for a fight and had Lila in her crosshairs. I moved to put myself in her path, prepared to throw her over my shoulder if I had to, but fortunately, I didn’t. To his credit, Brock kept ahold of her, whispering something in her ear that made her laugh. That laugh was at Lila’s expense—I knew strictly through observation. With a spiteful glance in our direction, they walked away.
When Lila exhaled, it was a thousand years of relief she let go. She brightened by increment, giving me a fleeting kiss before bounding off to wrap up her last duties. And I leaned back on the bar and watched her go, my foot hooked on the barstool rung and my heart on fire.
All I’d wished for, all I’d wanted, she’d delivered with the deepest affection. The admission had released me, the truth of her feelings sunshine on the fog of my doubt.
She wanted more. She wanted me. And this wouldn’t end. At least not because we didn’t try.
And I hoped beyond hope that we could find a way to make that work.
Find a way, I vowed as she strode toward me.
The smile on her face shouldn’t have been as fresh as it was for two in the morning. “You ready?” she asked.
With a nod, I stood, offering my arm. And out the door we went, into the cold New York night. I stepped to the curb, hand in the air and whistle on my lips. And within a minute, we were sliding into the warm cab, closing the night out behind us.
I gave him the address as Lila slid across the bench to nestle into my side with another sigh, this one lazy, sleepy.
“You finally run out of energy?” I asked, kissing the top of her head where it rested on my shoulder.
“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “This always happens—the letdown after a long night. It feels so good to not have to wear that mask anymore.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“Sometimes, I don’t either. I just turn it on when it needs to be on, and I leave it on without regard for how much electricity it takes. That is, until I get the bill.” She shifted to stretch her legs a little, rolling her ankles.
“Feet hurt?”
“Nope.”
I leaned back to look at her.
“I can’t feel them.”
A laugh slipped out of me. “Well, I’ll get you out of them soon enough. And the rest of this.”
She mock pouted. “What, you don’t like the rest of this?”
“Oh, trust me, I do. I just like you out of them even more.”
A happy sigh left her. “Thank you. For coming with me. I thought it would never end.”