Page 134 of Flaunt
Huh?
He saunters toward me with a sly look on his face. It’s typical Banks—a mix of sexiness and adorableness that’s unique to him.
“I know you need your space,” he says. “I don’t love it. I don’t really understand it. But I know it.”
“Okay.”
“And I know you need to take things slow. I remember you saying that you don’t like relationships because men try to tell you what to do with your time, expect you to bea certain person, and think it might end in marriage.” He leans forward. “I do kinda hope this ends in marriage, but I’ll keep that to myself.”
I cover my mouth with my hand.
“So maybe you need your own place for a while. Maybe you need to slowly transition into living together or whatever. I want you to be you because you are the woman I love.”
I drop my hand because it can’t cover my ear-to-ear smile anyway.
“Mom says relationships include compromise,” he says, lifting his chin. “So I’ll understand that you need your own apartment if you understand that I can’t sleep without you every night. But I’ll stay here sometimes if you’d like.”
“Banks …” I say, laughing.
“What’s it matter, anyway?” He shrugs. “It’s always going to be me and you. And I’ll get my whole garage this way, which is great because I’ve already seen what my brothers’ garages look like when their girls move in. There’s barely any space for tools.”
I can’t contain myself any longer. I burst out laughing.
He picks me up, and I wrap my legs around his waist, letting him kiss me as long, as deep, and as completely as he wants. Because he’s right. It is always going to be me and him. I can’t see our love story end any other way.
28
Banks
“Well,we complicated the fuck out of this,” I say, chuckling.
Sara stretches her arm across my stomach, feathering her fingers against my skin. “It’s your fault. I told you I don’t do relationships, and you just kept working me.”
I scoff. “Whatever. I’m pretty sure I told you I’d fall for you,andI’m absolutely certain that I thought you staying here was a terrible idea.”
“I need my toothbrush, and I don’t even know where it is,” she says, laughing. “Is it here? In my car? In a box in my apartment?”
“We need a system for this. Either we’ll have double the essentials like toothbrushes and … whatever else. We’ll keep one at each house. Or we’ll have to bring them back and forth.”
She plants a kiss on my sternum. “One in each house. That way, we can make game-time decisions about where we want to stay.”
I roll my eyes.
“I know you just rolled your eyes at me,” she says, smacking me lightly on the abs.
“How do you know that? You aren’t even looking at me.”
She giggles. “I just know.”
She rolls onto her back and then snuggles up next to me. I bring her head to my lips and kiss the side of it.
I did something I’ve never done before—I called in to work. Tasha found it highly entertaining that I was calling it for a personal day and accurately guessed it had something to do with Sara.“Maybe you can take one every month. It’ll do us all some good,” Tasha said, laughing.
“I know you hate this arrangement,” she says. “It’s been, what, two weeks or something, and you’re already over it.”
“True. But whatever. I’m hoping you’ll get frustrated by not having your favorite shampoo at your convenience, and the shirt you’ll want is at the other house. Then you’ll give in and live with me like the way things were designed.”
“Designed by whom?”
