Page 93 of Forged By Sacrifice

ME: I’m not talking to you about this.

DANI: But you’re not moving out, right?

ME: Why would I leave?

DANI: You’re the best roommate we’ve had in ages.

ME: Puhlease.

DANI: Truth. You’re family already.

ME: Trust me. You don’t want me as family.

DANI: Too late. You already are.

This hit me in the heart. I hadn’t been around them long enough to be family, but Dani had accepted me wholeheartedly, even knowing who my family was…maybe even more so than Mac had. I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t.

THE GUY: Dani says you’re at the library.

ME: Yes.

THE GUY: Will you be home soon?

My heart stuttered again. Family. Home. It was just too much. I had a family I loved. That loved me back. But the only place that had ever felt like home was the apartment above the salon I’d grown up in that was now gone. I didn’t really have a home anymore. Dani and Mac felt too much like home. Too much like things I could lose.

THE GUY: Do you want us to order from Bentley’s for you?

ME: You’re tempting me with gnocchi?

THE GUY: I’d love to tempt you with more than that.

I couldn’t respond right away because my heart wanted to patter happily and hopefully at what he meant. Was he saying he wanted more than one night? I plunged forward, figuring it would be easier to read his answer than to have to look him in the eye. Chicken. I’d never played chicken until Mac.

ME: That would break our one-night rule.

THE GUY: You left before our night was over, so I feel like you broke it first.

ME: The sun was out when I left.

THE GUY: The end of a night is not the sun rising. It’s being able to kiss the woman you were with as you wake up. To maybe have breakfast with roaming hands. To savor that moment together.

ME: I think we savored the heck out of it.

THE GUY: That wasn’t anything. I could have gone a few more rounds.

ME: Liar.

THE GUY: I don’t lie.

My body turned slowly into bubbling liquid covered in goosebumps at the thought of Mac having more in him. Of him being able to touch and fill me a few more times before I’d left.

THE GUY: So, gnocchi?

ME: No.

THE GUY: Too late, Dani already ordered it.

ME: Then, why did you even bother asking?

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