Part of Your World(54)

When I pulled into the driveway, Daniel was in the garden. I watched his head pop up and the grin spread across his face, and my mood instantly lifted. I got out of my car, and Hunter bounded over with Chloe running behind him in her pink pajamas. I caught the dog, laughing. He let out his signature rooooooo! while Daniel closed the space between us.

“You’re here.” He smiled over his dog.

“I am.”

He didn’t skip a beat. He gathered me into him and leaned down and kissed me, and it was like a part of my brain shut off. The part that was stressed and worried and angry.

He pulled away an inch and whispered against my lips. “You should call me before you come though.”

All the parts switched back on.

I took a step back, dropping my hands from his chest. “Oh. Right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t just show up like this.”

He smiled. “I love that you showed up like this. But at least give me a heads-up so I can shower.” He gestured to his dirty clothes. “And so I can have food ready for you.”

The relief must have shown on my face, because his brows drew down. “Why did you think I wanted you to call first?”

I didn’t answer.

Realization moved across his expression. “Did you…did you think I was going to have a girl here or something? I told you I wasn’t talking to anyone else.”

I hugged my arms around myself. “That’s none of my business—”

“I’m not seeing other people,” he said.

The corner of my lip twitched.

Then his amused expression fell. “Are you seeing other people?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He grinned. “Good.” He leaned in to kiss me again, and I pulled my face back.

“If you wanted to see other people, that would be okay.”

His smile fell. “Why would I want that?”

I tucked my hair behind my ear. “You know, we never really talked about this, Daniel. Maybe we should set rules.”

He studied my expression. “Okay.”

“So what rules do you want?” I asked.

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I want to be your boyfriend.”

It punched me right in the heart, and my stomach did a somersault. But my brain shot it down.

He wants to be my boyfriend? Why? I’m too old. Too old for him anyway. I live too far away, our lives are too different.

What did he want with me?

It was almost na?vely sweet. Like when a kid says they want to be an astronaut or a ballerina when they grow up. And then of course you get older and you end up doing something else that actually makes sense.

Maybe he just meant that he didn’t want us sleeping with other people? That he wanted to be exclusive? That I could understand.

I realized, almost in that moment, that I really didn’t want him to see other people either. Even the thought of him hugging someone else launched me into an internal fit of jealousy so sudden it shocked me.

If I’d shown up here and he’d been with another woman, it would have devastated me. I didn’t even realize it until just now. Looking at his open face, feeling his warm arms around me, something inside of me screamed MINE.

But it wasn’t fair to make him mine. Because I could never be his.

A boyfriend came with expectations. He’d want to meet my family, be with me for holidays, my birthday, his birthday. He’d want to come to my house, know my friends. And I couldn’t do any of those things. Ever. It felt unfair to let him decide not to date anyone else when this would never go anywhere.

“Daniel, I don’t want a boyfriend right now,” I said. “I don’t have room in my life for that.”

I thought I saw a flicker of disappointment cross his face, but he gave me a smile. “That’s okay. We don’t need titles. We can just agree that we’re exclusive and not doing anything else but this right now. I don’t have time for much more anyway.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

He smiled. “Okay.”

I should have been happy that I was getting what I wanted—monogamy without any of the strings. But I somehow felt disappointed anyway.

He leaned in and kissed me, and all my thoughts on this evaporated.

He had my face in his rough hands, and I could taste something fruity on his tongue. He wanted to shower, but I was glad he didn’t. He smelled like Daniel. Like a combination of the fresh earth he’d been digging in and the cedar of his workshop and clean sweat.

He started to pull away, but then seemed to decide he wasn’t done, and he kissed me again.

Ugh, this boy. I wanted to climb into him, merge with his body.

Daniel transported me. Everything about being here and being with him was a break from reality. He was closing open tabs on a laptop in my brain one at a time until he was the only thing on the screen. I felt Neil, my dad, and Royaume Northwestern fade into oblivion at the edges of my mind, and then disappear with a blip.

It was amazing that someone so wrong for me had this ability. Despite the incompatibility of our lives, he had this effect on me. I wondered distantly if we’d known each other in a former life and we’d found each other again. If that’s why he was so familiar…

Only this time I’d been born too soon and into a different level of a caste system that he couldn’t scale. It made me a little sad.