Page 53 of Knight
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Gwen
Four days. It wasn’t really that long in the concept of time. But when I was doing my best to hold myself back, it felt like an eternity. So waiting four days until Knight had a chance to say his peace with my dad shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but to me, it felt like forever.
Knight had made himself crystal clear about not crossing that line before he talked to my dad. I understood his reasoning behind everything but that didn’t mean I was happy about it. It was the right thing to do. It was respectful and honorable. I loved it just as much as I hated it. Or wanted to hate it. But how could I? Who in their right mind would want to turn down a man that would do that for them?
I was both nervous and excited. I mean, I wasn’t sure how my dad would react to the whole thing.
Just whatwasthe whole thing, you might wonder? Well, I wasn’t really all that sure myself. Because Knight and I hadn’t sat down and really talked about theuspart of what was to come.
Did he want to date? Or just take things super slow and see where it went? Was he expecting to claim me and call me his old lady? Or did he just want sex?
No, I knew it was more than just sex. There was too much between us for it to be only that. There was no denying the chemistry between us. And it went way beyond that too. The past. I knew it would always circle back to that. We’d shared so many things in life, so many important memories, it wasn’t something that would be done anytime soon.
That was what I truly believed. Our entire lives, our souls had been tied together. No matter how far away from me he was, whether it was emotionally or physically, I never was able to let him go. My heart and my mind had held him close all these years we had been apart.
By the time I made it to work, I was a spaced out mess. I wasn’t surprised that I messed up a few drink orders and managed to spill half a gallon of milk all over myself. I was super lucky I didn’t burn myself even a little.
“Wow,” Dale said coming up beside me after the mid-morning rush had died down. “You’re a mess today. Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I did my best to brush it off. “Just a lot going on in here today.” I tapped the side of my head.
“Holy shit,” he whispered in a harsh, shocked whisper as his eyes looked past me over my shoulder.
I whipped around to get a look at what he was seeing, not giving a crap if I was obvious or not.
“Oh, yeah…” I said keeping my voice low. The truth was I hadn’t even had the time or the mental space to process the whole thing.
“She’s…” he said, his voice trailing off.
“Blonde? Yeah, I know.” There was a strange strain in my voice.
Tara, and her newly blonde hair, bounced up to the counter as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I used the tip of my finger to push Dale’s jaw closed before she could notice.
“That’s weird, right?” he whispered in my ear before he turned away from the scene that had him in total shock.
“Women dye their hair every day,” I grit out then flashed Tara a smile. I knew my face was tight because I just wasn’t sure about the whole thing.
It was weird. Weird as fuck, I would have said. Though I couldn’t put my finger on why. When she’d shown up to the apartment sporting her new look, which was not only her hair but a makeup job that wasn’t her normal fresh face, I was in shock. Something tightened in my gut and as the boys went silent that night, I knew it wasn’t only me.
I tried my best to chalk it up to her trying to find her own identity. When I’d first met her she had seemed a bit timid and shy. Maybe being around me helped her come out of her shell a little, which I thought was a good thing. Then this could have just been like some sort of look-up-to-slash-flattery type of thing.
“Hey!” she said with an extra bounce as she stepped up to the counter.
“Hey,” I repeated and did my best to sound as cheerful as she had. It wasn’t her that had me feeling like I was holding back, I knew that. I was maybe just a little bit stressed out at the moment.
“So,” she said as she leaned a little closer to me. I took her direction and my body folded forward a bit as well. “I saw you guys talking like really close. Something going on? Did you drop that whole ‘we work together’ thing?”
My spine went ramrod straight as what I imagined a shocked expression took over my face. I was sure of it because I could feel my brows stretching as they reached for my hairline.
“What? Were you not just flirting with him? Sharing some sexy secret conversation?” Her face fell a bit and my head began to spin from her words.
Is that what it looked like from the outside? I hadn’t thought so, but then again, I wasn’t the most aware person sometimes. Then there was the fact that if I was quick to deny it, it could send the opposite message. Oh, and let me not forget that I couldn’t come right out and tell her that we were talking so closely was because we were talking about her. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings in any way. And if she wasn’t aware of the fact that her hair, and look, started to match up to mine, I didn’t want to be the one to point it out and make her feel weird or bad about it. The whole thing could have been subconscious on her end.
“Oh, no.” I dragged out the words as I tried to think of something to say. I wasn’t a good liar and truth was, I didn’t like to lie to begin with. “He was just talking about a customer and we didn’t want anyone to overhear.” Yeah, okay. That wasn’t that far from the truth.
“Oh.” Her mouth bent into a frown for a fraction of a second. “Well, then. Can I get my regular? And how much time do you have left?”
