And when those thoughts enter my mind, they start rolling around and escalating, snowballing and becoming worse and worse. My anxiety takes over, and soon I know I’ll be having a full-on panic attack. I’m pacing throughout my house, adjusting books on the shelf in my library, washing the spoon rest on my stove that was already clean, folding the laundry Nathaniel told me not to worry about after he started a load earlier this afternoon—towels he used to dry us off last night along with everything else in my hamper.
Right when I’m about to go into my room and get dressed, sure he’s not going to return and he’s somewhere laughing, telling all his friends that I’m this dumbass walking around my house topless while I wait for him… I hear my front door open, and I spin around to see his smiling face, his arms loaded down with bags and bags of takeout.
When his eyes meet mine where I’m trembling in the hallway, his expression falls, and he drops everything on the kitchen counter as he strides past it and toward me. He pulls me against him, his arm wrapping around the small of my back so when he straightens it lifts me onto my toes. His long fingers slide up into my hair from my nape and he tilts my head back to look into my eyes, his brow furrowed.
I swallow, blinking back the tears that had started to form in my panic. “I… I didn’t think you were coming back,” I confess, seeing the question in his eyes.
And he doesn’t laugh at me. He doesn’t make light of my worry or tease me. He doesn’t do any of that. He absorbs it, seems to catalogue my feelings and file it for future use, and he nods and lowers his face to kiss me gently on the lips. When he pulls back, I’ve stopped shaking, and his eyes are soft when he tells me, “I’ll always come back, little mouse.”
I take a stuttered breath in and huff it out in a nervous laugh. “Sorry I’m such a frea—”
“Stop,” he barks, and my teeth clack shut my mouth closes so abruptly. “You’re not a freak. I took way longer than I should have.” He moves his hand in my hair to where he cups the side of my neck and pets my jawline with this thumb. His eyes soften once more, and one corner of his sexy lips lifts into a half smile. “Gonna need them digits, Ms. Richards, so I can call you if I’m running late.”
I’m so relieved and at the same time overwhelmed by the rollercoaster of emotions I’ve just been on that I snort then giggle. “Just as long as you put me in your contacts as something other than that.”
He lifts a brow, letting go of my face, but keeps me tight to him with the arm around my back, and he reaches into his pocket. With a few swipes and touches, he asks, “Number?” and I give it to him. A couple taps later, he turns the phone around to face me with a smirk. In place of a name, there’s the word MINE in all caps surrounded by two little mouse emojis. “Incognito enough?” he prompts.
“That’ll do,” I say through my smile.
He turns the phone back to him and works his thumb across the screen, and a second later, I hear my ringtone coming from my purse by the front door. “And now you have mine.” He kisses me once more then gently lets me go, taking hold of my hand and tugging me over to the bags on the kitchen counter.
“What… in the world?” I murmur, my eyes going wide.
“Well, I picked up on the fact that you’re not the best at multiple choice,” he says with a wink, “so I thought, why choose? And I got us a little bit of everything.” He gestures to all the bags like he’s a game show model, and a smile spreads across my face. “I think after we get to know each other a little better, I won’t even need to ask. I’ll just feed you something I know you’ll like. Sound good?”
And it’s like my dream man has been dropped from the heavens and into my kitchen. I nod, choked up a little. “Sounds perfect. Thank you.”
“Uuumm… your kitchen table’s a little small, baby. Want to do this picnic style in the living room while we watch another episode?” When my mouth opens and closes like a fish a couple times, he chuckles. “Scratch that.” He clears his throat and deepens his voice with a lifted brow, but there’s a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “We’re going to eat this picnic style in the living room while we watch another episode. Please grab us some utensils, little mouse.”
“Yes, Sir,” I reply, and circle around the bar to the drawer that holds my set of forks and knives. “Are there napkins in the bags?”
“I’m pretty sure there’s enough napkins in all these bags for you to have a lifetime supply. We’ll never have to buy napkins ever again,” he tells me, and I like the way it sounds as if he means we’ll be living together at some point.
When I reach the living room, he’s pulled my coffee table out into the center of the room and is setting out a buffet’s worth of food. Two pizzas with different toppings, three sandwiches sliced in half, two salads with a selection of dressings, and four different flavors of cookies. He pulls out two bottles of water, showing me the label as I sit on the floor at one end of the coffee table.
“Spring water, not purified,” he explains, when my brow furrows, and I grin.
“Someone took Zac Efron’s lesson to heart,” I reply, reminded of the episode we watched this morning about the different kinds of water, and how purified
