Page 56 of Bullet
“Thanks, Bullet. Sorry for calling you in while you’re with your lady,” Seth said.
Harry walked over to me and put his hand behind my back. “No worries, right?”
I smiled and nodded. “Right.”
“I’m pretty sure this girl and I could sit and watch paint dry and enjoy ourselves,” Harry said. “It was really just an excuse to drag her around with me more.”
My stomach turned a little and I experienced a tinge of remorse. It really was going to crush Harry when he realized this was all just a ploy.
It would be hard to go back to life without him for me, too.
“Well, I think that’s all I needed, so unless you need anything from me, you guys can head out. I’m done wasting your time,” Seth explained.
“Just make sure you get a copy of it, and don’t hand the check over until you get the copy of the signed contract bybothparties,” Harry said.
Seth nodded. “You got it, boss.”
“All right. See ya later, Dynamite.”
“Bye.”
Harry linked his fingers with mine and pulled me back out of the warehouse through the back door. Just before we got on his bike, he dragged me toward him. I was anticipating a kiss, but he just stood there, staring at me for a while.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied, then he did kiss me, passionately and deep, in a way that shook me down to my toes. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” I answered breathlessly.
“Cool. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty
Celia
Harry held up a bottle of wine. “Is this a good enough kind? I don’t want to seem cheap.”
“Yeah, I think that’s good,” I said.
We’d swung by a grocery store at my behest to get a bottle of wine and flowers for dinner. It was the kind of decorum that I had learned from my dad who was something of a stickler for manners. Maybe it was because he was born in Athens, Georgia, which was a bit of a debutante city, but practicing good gentlemanly and ladylike behavior was something he preached until his dying day. I no longer felt the need to put on airs or pretend as if I wasn’t enjoying my time with Harry or looking forward to dinner. It was all going to fall apart at the seams soon anyway, why not give us both one last night of fun?
“I have no idea what kind of flowers she likes,” Harry said as we perused the floral section.
“It’s less about her specifically, and more just about flowers for the house. It’s a sign of being grateful for the invitation.” I pulled out a bouquet of sunflowers. “These are always good. They’re pretty and not overly difficult to maintain if they want to.”
“Okay,” Harry said. “If you think sunflowers are the way to go, let’s do sunflowers.”
We took the flowers and wine to the front to checkout and standing next to Harry in the grocery store line felt oddly domestic yet comfortable. Thinking about what I wanted from my life, that was it. Someone that I didn’t feel the need to constantly be talking to or regularly entertaining, but we could just be in one another’s space and be okay.
Was I wasting my luck of ever finding something like this by intentionally torpedoing things with Harry? What we had seemed rare. I hoped there was someone else like him out there for me.
We got back on his bike after carefully packing the wine and flowers into the back compartment where they’d be safe, and then made our way to Harry’s dad’s house. He actually lived a little outside of Hoppa, which Harry explained was so that Harry wasn’t regularly triggered by being near to where he grew up. He had a nice home, and it somehow fit who Harry was. I was hoping to get a few stories of young Harry running around while I was there, maybe even seeing a picture or two.
Harry parked his bike in the driveway, and we got off. The front door was already opening, likely called by the roar of the bike, so we pulled out the wine and flowers quickly and made our way up. Before we even got to the door, an older-looking dog came rushing out of the house wagging its tail with excitement. Harry bent down and lifted the Dachshund up from the ground with one hand and held him out toward me.
“This is Milton. He was my therapy dog.”
I rustled Milton’s ears. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
