The look he shot me was filled with desire. “We’re not doing this. We can’t do this.”
“What is that?” I asked, faking innocence. “What are we doing?”
He made a sound of exasperation. “You know what I’m talking about.”
Of course I did. We’d been heading towards this for weeks. But he had to say it. He’d yet to say it. And I wasn’t filling in the blanks for him.
He leaned in, then tore himself away. He was fighting against it because he was afraid of other people’s opinions, or maybe his own morality. It was possible he was worried he would hurt me. That I would assume too much. Become a clinger. Maybe he didn’t know what he wanted aside from what he thought he couldn’t have.
“Using last names again?” I asked, staring at him boldly.
There was more than one way for me to put us on equal footing. He wasn’t going to put this on me. It was his choice. Mine was already made.
“No, we’re not using last names.” He rubbed his jaw. “Beyond that I don’t have a f**king clue.”
“Yes, you do.” With that, I left the room. He was in. I could feel in the shift of his body towards me. That wasn’t a one-time kiss. He wanted more. He wanted me, beyond just the physical. Maybe in spite of me physically not being his type.
Let him define us later.
For now, I would just wait and let him be the boss.
In every sense.
“He’s playing with you,” Cat told me bluntly, sitting across from me in the coffee shop.
“Cat, that’s a little harsh,” Heath told her, looking shocked. “I’m sure Tiffany knows what she’s doing.”
I was telling them my plans to stay at Richfield for Christmas and it had not gotten a positive reception. I hadn’t given full disclosure but I did admit there was something going on between us, I just didn’t know what. Cat’s assessment of Devin made me blush with anger and humiliation. “I’m not an idiot. I know that he’s not going to marry me,” I said. “He’s bored, he’s feeling restless and over the whole New York thing. We’re alone together all the time and I’m a novelty. A nut he wants to crack.” I ran my finger over the rim of my coffee mug. “The weird shut-in girl. He just finds it fascinating that I haven’t been more than twenty miles away from home my entire life.”
But he did genuinely like me. I believed that without a doubt. Yet something about her reaction made me want to keep the true nature of my feelings a secret. It was just between me and Devin. It was too new, too fragile, too… special. What happened at Richfield was our world, our secret, our relationship.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be a prick about it,” she said, sounding contrite. “I’m just worried about you.”
“I know.” I did. And she was right to be worried. I knew it. Even if it made my chest tight and my palms sweaty. I knew that eventually Devin would go back to New York and I couldn’t go with him. “But while I might fantasize, I’m not an idiot. I’m going to take advantage of an opportunity that might never present itself to me ever again.”
“You’re always saying she’s practical,” Heath said to Cat. Then he studied me. “But Tiffany, seriously, you don’t have the experience this guy does. You might get hurt, you know.”
“Oh, I think it’s pretty much a guarantee I’ll get hurt.” I smiled at them. “But I know what I’m doing. For whatever reason he does like me, for now. Today. Tomorrow or the day after or the day after that he’ll get tired of me. I know that. But I can’t help it. He fascinates me.”
He did. I knew his scent now, his laugh, his movements, expressions. He was surly and brusque, but he was also kind and generous. He was an introvert in an extroverted profession, and mistakenly or not I felt like he showed me a side not everyone saw. The real Devin. Not G Daddy. And I liked Devin. I liked him in a way that my insides warmed when I saw him, and my thoughts went all soft and sweet, like I was continually stroking a kitten. I wasn’t a sentimental person. Heath was right about Cat’s assessment of me. I was practical.
But Devin brought out something more in me. He made me feel like a woman. Like all of those feelings and needs and desires that I had suppressed couldn’t be contained anymore. They had to breathe, out in the open.
Cat sighed. “Everything in me is saying run away as fast as you can. But I know you. You’ve made up your mind to stick it out.”
She did know me. “I have.”
“Even knowing you’ll get hurt?”
I had a card to play and I pulled it. “Did the possibility of getting hurt stop you from being with Heath?”
“Whoa,” he said. “How did I get pulled into this?” Heath was a fisherman and a former Marine, and he was wearing a flannel shirt. Not the hipster variety with skinny jeans, but a working man’s flannel. He put his hands up before reaching for his coffee. “I say do whatever you want except for any illegal drugs.”
“That’s your advice?” Cat looked at him in exasperation. Then to me, she gave a half smile. “And no, nothing would have stopped me from being with Heath. But that was different.”
“How?” I wasn’t trying to be a bitch any more than she was trying to be a prick, but that was bullshit. We all entered into a relationship, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it, with someone knowing there was a very distinct possibility we could get hurt. I knew Devin was going to return to New York and forget I existed. For the most part. But Cat had gone back to Heath after he had disappeared on her for four years, so what was the difference?
None.
“He’s rich. And older.”
“I am?” Heath joked.
Cat made a face. “Guys like that do whatever they want.”
“I think he just walked in,” Heath commented in a low voice.
“What?” I swiveled around. He was right. Devin had walked into the shop, and was impatiently sweeping his gaze around the room. I raised my hand in greeting when he spotted me. “I wonder why he’s back so soon.”
I had only been there for forty-five minutes and he’d said he would be back in two hours. The coffee shop was a local place, not a chain, and it was filled with moms, fishermen, and retired people. Devin stood out from the regulars and a half dozen pair of eyes watched him cross the room. The one thing he didn’t have to worry about was someone local reporting his movements to online media sites. Mainers were big on live and let live. They wouldn’t give a shit what a guy from New York was doing, though they would stare at him suspiciously.