Page 37 of Be My Reason

“What? Why would he do that? It wasn’t his fault.”

“Oh, but he thinks it was. Something about saying all the wrong things to his kids and making them believe their friends wouldn’t associate with them anymore.”

“I still think that if Nate wanted to get in touch with me, he would have.” I frown. “It was his choice. He could have found a way even if his dad didn’t want him to.”

“Perhaps that is true,” she says. “But why not give him the benefit of the doubt.Or at least talk to him about it before you condemn him. He was young back then, just like you were and, as we found out just tonight, you didn’t always make the wisest decisions.” She raises her eyebrows at me and gives me a look that only a mother can give that has my figurative tail going between my legs.

“Still,Mom, that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to live with him. I don’t want to live with any man. Ever.”

She smiles sweetly at me. “Sleep on it dear.It will be better in the morning. You’ve had a long day.” She kisses my forehead and goes to the door. “Never say never, Brooklyn.”

Chapter Thirteen

I can’t help but stare out the front window of the shop. There he is, again, like he has been every morning this week. Nate is stretching out in the park across the street, getting ready for a run. He is without a shirt so I can see the ripples of his stomach, the outlines of his muscles, the hardness of his body. I can almost smell his scent. That mixture of clean freshness and Nate with a touch of man sweat. A heady combination.

I take a deep breath, knowing that I will get to enjoy his scent first-hand when in about forty-five minutes he will come in the shop and order a coffee, black, and a blueberry muffin. Same thing. Every. Day.

Then he will walk out the frontdoor of the bakery and around the back to the private entrance of our apartment. When did it becomeourapartment?

I know he does this on purpose. Well, I think he does it on purpose.He never looks over this way to see if I’ve noticed him, so maybe it is just his routine. Oh, I’ve noticed. Along with every other red-blooded woman in the bakery at seven in the morning. And a few men, too.

“He’s good for business,” a cute redhead says, pulling me from my trance.

I look around and realize that the shopismore crowded than usual. People are hanging around instead of popping in for coffee and then leaving for work.

I roll my eyes andput on a fake smile. “What can I get you?” I try to complete her order without looking outside again. Instead, I look at all of the women eyeing my new roommate. Then I turn to see Kaitlyn all wide-eyed and frozen in place as she was cleaning the coffee filter.

“Ettu, Brute?” I use a napkin to dab the invisible drool from her chin.

“Lyn.” She breaks the stare and looks at me. “If you don’t get your head out of your ass soon and jump on that masterpiece of a man, someone else will.”

Someone else.I abhor the thought of anyone else with him. Touching him, smelling him. Then I chastise myself. I am such a hypocrite. How can I be mad at other women for wanting him? He isn’t mine. He will never be mine.

I get back to work and try to concentrate on anything but the man who I know will walk into my shop in—I check the clock—thirty minutes.

I think back to earlier this week when I made the decision to tryand live with this situation. Make the best of it. Lemonade from lemons and all that.

When Emma went away to college she was placed with the roommate from hell her first year.She couldn’t get her dorm assignment changed so instead, she rearranged her class schedule so that she was gone when her roommate was home. I decided to take a page from the Emma chronicles and go with avoidance as well.

I have moved my usual crack-of-dawn runs to the late afternoon so that I’m out when Nate gets home from work.I have caught up on loads of bookkeeping at the shop by coming down here after my shower and eating dinner while I reconcile the books. Then when I go back upstairs, I read in bed for hours, avoiding him out in the living room watching television.

It is working.I have barely said two words to him all week. In fact, I think I talk to him more when he is placing his order here at the bakery, than when in our apartment.

Ionly wish he would go out more. He sits at home every night watching movies or working at the drafting table he has set up in his bedroom.

I’m coming out of the back with a tray of fresh muffins when he walks in. I watch him make his way to the counter. He is walking towards me and all I can see is that sweaty body, musclesall shining and rippled. His eyes are on me, devouring me like the muffin I know he is about to order.

Women are practically lined up on either side of him as he walks by them, like a football player passes the cheerleaders lining the way out to the field. Their collective chins are hitting the floor as he reaches the counter and pulls out a few napkins to wipe off his face.

He doesn’t look at any of them. He doesn’t break eye contact with me. I think there must be twenty women in here that would like me dead on the spot.Iwould wish me dead on the spot if I were one of them, watching the way he looks at me like he is the moth to my flame.

Only I fear I will be the onewho gets burned.

“Morning, Brooklyn.” He smiles that white, toothy smile that gets my internal juices flowing.

“Good morning.The usual?” I ask.

“Yes.Thank you.” He pulls a ten out of the pocket in his running shorts and hands it to me. It’s moist with sweat and I resist the urge to put it to my nose. That would be wrong on so many levels. I put it in the register and give him his change which he dumps in the tips bucket.

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