Page 108 of Untethered Heart
ME:
Love you more xx
And I do. I love her more than I ever thought one person could love another.
Chapter fifty-one
I’m smiling like a dork, and I don’t care. Caleb and I are chopping vegetables for dinner while he tells me all the reasons why he’ll never offer to take Tiny for a walk again.
Namely, because Gage’s sixty-eight-kilo Great Dane was the one who tookCalebfor a walk. For a good forty metres. Through the mud.
“If we ever get a dog, Siren, it needs to be small.”
“You’d want a dog?” I ask while I sprinkle the chopped capsicum over our pizzas.
“I can see us with a dog,” he says, the words casual, yet confident, as if it’s something he’s already thought about in depth. Imagining our future. My stomach is a mess of bubbles, and I feel like I could float. They’re filling and popping to the point where they can’t be contained, and the only way out is through fits of giggles.
“I think a dog would need a yard, though,” I say, looking around Caleb’s penthouse before I reach for the tin of pineapple pieces. I walk over to the sink to drain out the juice and then rejoin Caleb at the bench.
“Are you having pineapple on yours?” I ask while sprinkling almost half the tin onto my pizza base.
“What else would you want?” Caleb asks.
My brows drop. “I’ll have a little of the mushroom, please.”
“No,” he chuckles. “In a house. A yard for a dog, but what else?” A hesitant curiosity hovers in his question. When I meet his eyes, the things unsaid are written all over his face. He asks because he wants to make these things happen. Anything I could possibly want, he wants to give me. But all I’ve ever wanted, all that’s really mattered to me in life, is family. Feeling that sense of belonging.
So that’s what I tell him.
“As long as you’re there, I don’t mind.”
A boyish grin erupts on his face, and he leans over to kiss me.
“What about you?” I ask.
“I’d love a big outdoor area like what my grandparents have. I love family dinners, so I’d want space to keep doing those sorts of things.”
Of all the things a billionaire could want in the world, it’s sharing time with his loved ones. I literally couldn’t wish up anything better myself.
“I love that. A big backyard for a dog and our families.” I smile.
“How many bedrooms do you think we’d need?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Most houses have like three or four, right?” I drop a few mushroom slices on my pizza and then sprinkle on the cheese so it’s ready for the oven.
“Would you want to fill all those?”
My skin prickles as his question sinks in. “You mean with children?”
“Yes.”
I dust my hands off over the chopping board, then spin around to face him. “I’ve never really thought about children. It felt so far away compared to the things life was throwing at me in the present.”
I can tell it wasn’t exactly the answer he was hoping for. It’s not that I don’t want children, I just didn’t expect the reality of discussing them with a partner would happen so soon. Notin a relationship, but in life. When my dad died, life was about surviving and looking after my grandmother. Then it was studying and supporting my brother in his aspirations and making his dreams my own. Relationships were the last thing on my mind, especially when my own mother’s abandonment caused me such self-doubt.
“I would like them, though. With you.”
“Me too.” He smiles, and the way his cheeks pink with the sincerity of his answer is quite possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
