“You’ve got a lot of rules for third dates,” she joked.
“I’m serious.”
“I…I actually don’t know what to say,” she said on a half laugh. “I don’t know how to tell people things.”
“Sure you do,” he said. “You tell your YouTube people stuff all the time.”
“That’s different. That’s not me being…”
“Vulnerable and real?” he supplied.
“Maybe that,” she admitted.
“It still counts as putting yourself out there. You aren’t showing them some kind of highlight reel in full makeup with studio lighting. You’re putting your hopes and dreams out there and asking strangers to care about them, too.”
“Geez. You’ve really been doing your research,” she said, impressed.
“When something interests me—or when I find out I’m missing out on something great like my asshole siblings and their dumb GIF conversations—I make an effort. Now it’s your turn. Talk, Nichols.”
Kevin, sensing her hesitation, leaned against her legs and looked up at her with unconditional love. She took a breath, and then the plunge.
“I was too selfish to notice Dean was gay, and I all but forced him to marry me, and then when he got up the guts to tell me the truth, just shy of our first anniversary, I put all of it on him. Blamed him for it all when the only thing he’d tried to do was not hurt me. We came back to each other—as friends—eventually, but I swore I would never do that to him or anyone again.
“Yet here we are a decade and change later, and I’m doing it all over again. I haven’t learned a goddamn thing. I’m still a broken twenty-two-year-old hanging on too tight to the pieces, hoping they magically fit back together.”
He didn’t ask her what broke her or if those shards ever cut her from holding them too tightly. He didn’t tell her to go easy on herself or agree or disagree. Instead, he very deliberately cupped her chin in his hands and kissed her softly, steadily.
His mouth was firm and warm against hers, and this time, instead of stealing her breath, it felt like he was giving it back to her. The tightness in her chest loosened, and something light and bright bloomed inside. Like heartburn. Only nice.
She tasted him, breathed him in, and felt both lighter and more firmly grounded.
“Gah,” she managed when she pulled back.
The smile that danced at the corners of his lips was soft and amused. He swiped his thumb over her lower lip.
“What was that for?” she asked, finally finding her vocabulary.
“When Kevin does something good, he gets a treat.”
Maggie felt her mouth fall open in an O. “Are you dog training me?”
“I’m rewarding you for learning to do something that goes against your nature.”
She poked him in the chest. “That’s not a no.”
He shocked the hell out of her again by slipping an arm around her shoulders and dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “Come on, darlin’。 Let’s get you some ice cream.”
The dog let out a strangled kind of yodel and danced up on his hind legs.
“Heel, you muscle-bound jerk,” Silas said, giving the leash a tug. Kevin jumped to obey, trotting at his heels.
“Look how good he’s being,” Maggie said, falling into step.
“Fancy dog trainers call it being food-driven, which is usually a great way to motivate during training. But if Kevin gets bored, he just decides to cut out the middleman and give himself the treats. Two weeks ago, I got a call from the ice cream place saying Kevin was waiting in line for his usual. Still don’t know how he got out of the house.”
They left the block of single-family bungalows behind them and crossed the street into a quiet section of the downtown. Brick row homes in cute paint colors and tidy front stoops crowded close together.
“Kevin has a very smart approach to life. Figure out how to get yourself what you want,” she mused.
Silas gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she refused to acknowledge how good, how right, it felt to be touched by him. “You can’t get yourself everything you want,” he told her. “Otherwise you end up trying to do the jobs of a dozen people and running yourself ragged.”
“Maybe I just need to simplify. Make my wants fewer,” she hypothesized. She could do a whole year on tiny homes or smallish homes. Less square footage meant less to renovate. She could double the number of properties she normally did in a year.
“Or maybe,” he said, interrupting her thoughts, “you should honor your wants as they are and accept the fact that no woman is an island. Get some help. Take a damn break once in a while.”