He’s telling the truth. I can see it in his face.

“Why wouldn’t you deserve it?”

“A lot of reasons. I was involved with a woman last year. She played a lot of head games. It didn’t end well, and she still makes it difficult sometimes.”

“To get into a relationship?”

“Yeah. Something like that. Shit. Why is this all heavy again? Look, I really like being around you, and I want to see where this goes between you and me. Just us.”

“Okay. I’d like that, too.”

Lance seems relieved. “Great. Good.”

Appetizers arrive, so we dig in. In the time it’s taken me to get through half a glass of wine, Lance has had two.

Part of the reason I’m not much of a drinker is because it hits me hard. The other part is because of the problems it’s caused Cinny over the years. I have to assume Lance has a much better tolerance than I do since he outweighs me by about a hundred pounds.

Tonight I’m having a glass to help calm the butterflies in my stomach, but every time Lance reaches for my hand, fingers the strap of my dress, presses his knee up against mine, or pays me an idle compliment, they start fluttering around in there, making it hard to breathe.

Dinner is a long, slow event, and thankfully our conversation moves away from serious subjects and turns lighter. Lance gets a message from his friend Miller—the guy whose forehead I rubbed the penis drawing off of—and shows me a picture of his newborn baby.

“I got him that outfit,” Lance says proudly.

The tiny baby’s fist is wrapped around a massive finger, and he’s trying to eat it. The onesie he’s wearing says LADIES MAN. He’s blond and blue eyed, just like his dad.

Lance flips to the next picture, which includes a blond woman I recognize.

“Hey! That’s my yoga instructor!”

“Huh?”

I tap the screen over her face. “Sunshine teaches me yoga. Or she did until she stopped to have the baby.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess Sunny’s gonna have to take a break for a while, right?”

“I hope not too long. I miss her.”

A text message alert pops up, and the contact I saw when Lance left his phone at the clinic appears: DO NOT FUCKING REPLY. Lance expels a curse and powers down his phone, shoving it in his pocket.

“Sorry about that. No more interruptions for the rest of the night.”

I give him a small smile, but it’s hard not to wonder who that person is. I’m pushing myself to ask when Lance continues speaking.

“Anyway, I don’t know how long Sunny’s planning to stay at home,” he says. “I’m guessing until she gets bored or whatever. She doesn’t have to work if she doesn’t want to, but she’s not much for sitting around.”

“It must be hard for Miller to be away from them when you’re out of town.”

“Yeah. We’ve only had short runs so far but sometimes we’re gone for more than a week at a time. I think it’s making him antsy. I guess it’s good he cares, right? Even if it might affect his game.”

“Kids change priorities.”

“If you’re a good parent, I guess,” Lance says, then changes the topic again.

Once we’ve finished our meal, Lance decides he still has room for dessert, even if I don’t. He asks for an extra spoon, but it goes unused since he feeds me small bites of panna cotta instead. His eyes on are my mouth the entire time. I keep waiting for him to find an excuse to kiss me, but he doesn’t. Not on the lips, anyway. But his mouth finds my shoulder on more than one occasion, as well as the back of my hand, my knuckles, and my fingertips.

He keeps a hand on my back as we wait for the car at the valet and rests his free one on my thigh on the ride back to my place. When he pulls up to my house, miraculously finding a parking spot, he looks as nervous as I suddenly feel again.

“I had a really good time tonight,” I tell him.

He shifts the car into park and extends his arm along the back of my seat. “Me, too.” He doesn’t take his eyes off my mouth as he leans in and brushes his lips over mine.

“Do you want to come in?” I ask before he comes back for another kiss, possibly with tongue this time.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

My heart sinks a little, and I drop my gaze to my lap, where my purse sits. “Oh.”

“But I want to anyway.” His fingers glide across my shoulder. “Even if I shouldn’t.”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

“Because I’ll want to do a lot more than just kiss you this time.”

“That’s okay.”

“Is it?”

I bite my lip and nod. “I’ll let you do a lot more than kiss me this time.”

He fingers a lock of my hair. “You’ll let me, or you want me to?”

“Both,” I whisper.

Lance cuts the engine. “I like that answer a lot.”

CHAPTER 17

WHAT I WANT

LANCE

My palms are sweaty as I get out of the car and rush around the hood so I can open Poppy’s door before she does. I want to be exactly like my parents expected me to be: refined and with manners.

But I’m not really like that. All of that fell away after my mum moved to Connecticut. I drifted even further when I was drafted to the farm team and got my own place. I shed all the pretension, the façade of civility, and fell down, down, down into a dark hole of excess.