Daydream (Maple Hills, #3)(89)

He leans in slowly, grinning before kissing me in a way that makes my entire body tingle. “Is that a good thing?”

“Yes.”

“I told you saying no to me wasn’t going to happen.”

“What should I wear later?” I ask, apparently accepting his non-invitation with no objections. “For our plans.”

He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Something you like.”

“You are so, so helpful.”

“I know. It’s one of my many talents.”



* * *



THE DAY HAS FLOWN BY and I’m grateful that I don’t work in retail full time.

In a bid to decompress from the chaos that was working in Enchanted, I attempted to work on my book, and as a result have left myself with not enough time to find matching shoes. By the time Henry lets himself into my house, I only have one. It takes all my powers not to drool when I look up from where I’m kneeling on the floor of my closet and spot Henry standing there in a suit and white shirt.

“Why are you eye-fucking me?” he asks, leaning against the doorframe calmly.

“I’m not!” I argue, although I definitely might be. “Okay, it’s the suit.”

“You see me in a suit every week.”

“That suit is different.” I don’t know anything about men’s fashion, but this one looks like it was made to mold to every muscle in his body. Not too tight, just enough to accentuate his physique. “You look really good.”

He just smiles, which I’m going to accept as agreement. Henry reaches into his inner suit pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. “I was going to do flowers, but I thought you might be bored of them.”

“I could never get bored of anything you create.” I open the piece of paper he hands me and find a drawing of me staring back. I’m in my living room reading a book with Joy in my lap. It looks like a photograph. “Did you do this from memory?”

“Yeah. I started it a couple of weeks ago, but I finished it last night.”

“I thought you said you were studying last night!” I say, my voice creeping higher than it should.

“No, I said I was busy working. I never said I was studying.” My jaw drops. “Halle, if you’re going to stay kneeling on the floor in front of me with your mouth wide open, we might end up having a very different evening than the one I’ve planned. Just say thank you and hurry up.”

Every inch of my body gets hotter. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, and you look really good, too.”

Henry watches me until I finally find my other shoe, and holds out his hand to help me from the floor. “I have two shoes. I’m ready. Do I get to know where we’re going yet?”

“No,” he says, smiling. “It’s a surprise.”

We put the makeshift cardboard wall around my Christmas tree to prevent Joy from trying to climb it and leave her with Destiny’s Child’s Christmas album playing for company. I truly believe that Henry would bring her everywhere we go in one of those cat backpacks if I let him.

We sit in a comfortable quiet, letting the radio fill the silence between us as we idle in traffic. His hand is holding the inside of my thigh, and I’m trying to hold myself together.

He turns the radio down, twisting in his seat to face me as we slowly creep down the highway. “Have you written anything today?”

“Maybe like a thousand words before I started getting ready. I was pretty tired after helping at the bookstore.”

“And what were your imaginary friends doing for those thousand words?” he asks, eyes darting between the road and me. “Is she dating his friend yet?”

“No, the book moves around in time so you see the key things in their story. I’m writing the past when she’s worried she likes him more than he could ever like her, because he isn’t a relationship guy. She’s scared to get hurt and she’s keeping bits of herself back, which he hates. She wants him to prove that he deserves those bits before she hands them over, and he wants her to just trust that he can be the person she needs because what they have is special enough for the risk.”

“And can he? Change for her?”

“No.”

He keeps checking between me and the road, which is how I catch his furrowed brow. “Why not?”

“You’re asking me to spoil the book for you?” He nods. “I don’t know yet. I’m working it out as I go. Mainly because I question if one person should change to be in love with another person. At what point do you eventually revert back to the person you were? And is the love even genuine if you had to become someone else to achieve it?”

“I disagree,” he says. “I think the right person makes you the person you were supposed to be in the first place. I don’t agree that you become a different person. That suggests people can’t change through all the other factors that make people evolve that aren’t romantic.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ve seen my friends change for the better because they fell in love with the right person. If people only fell in love when the other person became their perfect match, messy relationships wouldn’t exist. People can’t control when they fall in love. You wanted to love Will, but you couldn’t.”