Page 55 of The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos

“Yes, your place. I’ll be drawn and quartered if my family heard the noises you’ll be making coming from my bedroom.”

Oh, God …Evan automatically moves in to kiss her again, but she presses her hand to his mouth and smiles, stopping him in his tracks. His lips smoosh against her fingers.

Her dimples deepen before she spins away, leaving the storage room so Evan can regain his composure alone. It’s impossible to stop smiling. This woman drives him crazy in all the best ways.

The next week, when she comes over after Mass, Evan watches Dalisay—naked, warm, soft—sleeping next to him. He was supposed to make brunch, but they had sex instead, and she fell asleep almost immediately after. He’s not complaining. She’s exhausted, obviously, so he tries not to move to avoid waking her up so he can be this close to her as long as possible. He likes looking at her slightly parted lips, watch as her soft, slow breathing makes her chest rise and fall, how her eyelashes just barely rest against the soft skin under her eyes when they’re closed. It’s in that moment that Evan realizes the truth.

He really likes Dalisay. Like,reallylikes.

He doesn’t know exactly when it happened; it’s not like it was a definite lightning-strike moment. It just did.

It could have been so easy to ignore these feelings and win the bet, go their separate ways. He goes cold at just the thought.

He hasn’t felt this way about … well, about anyone. Not for a long time. It’s a kind of certainty that’s almost tangible, like a solid fist behind his rib cage that refuses to unclench.

Evan has invited her into every aspect of his life. They go on long walks with Tallulah, spend hours in bookstoresand libraries, and she’s even started coming to D&D nights. Despite never having played before, she picks it up quickly, and she really gets into character as a barbarian half-orc, which Evan would be lying if he said didn’t turn him on just a little bit. Pinky’s the first to remind him that he never invited Becca to D&D nights, and that realization had rung through his head like a bell. He’s serious about this woman.

Riggs threw a pen at his head the day after his promotion was announced, saying that he can’t keep walking in on them getting hot and heavy in storage closets forever, and while Evan feels bad that Riggs had to cover for them, he can’t get enough of her.

It’s little things that make his heart soar: how, when she laughs too hard, she snorts; that she has a habit of tidying the table whenever they go out to restaurants, adjusting her glass and plate just so before she can eat; how unconsciously she drums out beats on any flat surface she can touch, even sometimes tapping out a paradiddle on her hips when she’s feeling awkward. He doesn’t know if she realizes she does it, and he’d never point it out in case she became self-conscious about it and stopped.

She’s so expressive, like when he tells her something that catches her off guard, and her eyebrows shoot up and her eyes get big and that when she smiles so wide it stretches across her face, like she wears what she’s thinking. Even when she’s reading, he can see the emotions flick across her face, reacting in real-time to the events on the page. Everything in him makes him want to ask her what she’s thinking about.

She’s sharp, and clever, and he loves how she’s all his …

Whoa. He actually thought it.Loves.

It shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, especially when yesterday, as he was walking Tallulah, he found himself standing in front of a jewelry store, staring at rings in the display window. He laughed about it, thinking of himself as Gollum drawn to the One Ring. Of course, it’s still so early in their relationship to seriously be considering marriage, but he can’t help that he is already imagining spending his whole life with her. He didn’t buy the ring. But the fact that he considered it says more than he’s willing to admit.

Of course, he’s serious about her. Every chance they get, they’ve been having sex at his condo, but she’s never stayed the night, always choosing to go home before it gets too late. She says she doesn’t want her family to know they’re doing it, that it’s hard for her to feel normal about dating because she wasn’t allowed to for so long.

Her family is a lot different than his. They’re way stricter, for one, and he knows it comes from a place of love, that they care about her well-being, but it’s a stark contrast to his own upbringing. Most of the time he felt like he was raising himself, not because his parents were neglectful, but because they wanted Evan to be more independent. But what would Dalisay’s family think if they found out he’s looking at rings already? What about his own parents? Would they say he’s being too hasty? That he’s getting caught up in his feelings? Would they try to talk him out of it?

He’s deep into a thought spiral when Dalisay stirs. When her eyes crack open to look at him, he smiles. All his worries melt away.

“Did I fall asleep?” she whispers.

“Only for a little bit,” he says and brushes the hair out of her face to plant a soft kiss on her forehead.

“Sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.” She does that a lot, apologize for things that don’t require it. It’s so distinctly Dalisay, it’s almost become a punctuation mark she uses.

With a cute groan, Dalisay wraps her arm over him and pulls him closer, nuzzling her cheek into his chest and draping her leg over his so he’s enveloped in her warmth. Her hair smells like vanilla and her smooth skin like lavender. Out of habit, he places another kiss on her crown.

“Were you watching me sleep like a creep?” she asks.

“I wasn’t trying to.”

“Okay, creep.”

“You were snoring so loudly, you’re kind of hard to ignore.”

She playfully slaps his chest. “I was not!”

Evan chuckles, and Dalisay twists to look at him, digging her chin into his sternum as she smiles. It kind of hurts, but he would never tell her that. He doesn’t want her to go.

“So …,” he says, “you can say no if you want to, but my dad and stepmom want to meet you.”

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