These are the thoughts that scare the shit out of me and keep me from pushing our relationship too far, too fast. What if she loves him more than me? Will she always love him more? As if having to compete for Dahlia’s love against a ghost isn’t hard enough, knowing the things I know about him just makes me hate him more. But what I know about him, I’d never tell her. I’d never hurt her that way.
After she jumps from puddle to puddle, she closes her eyes and raises her arms out to the side. She tips her head back and spins in circles like this is something people do every day. Her spirit mesmerizes me, and although I never met her Grammy, I know that woman’s spirit is alive inside this girl.
Smiling, I walk over to her and her eyes open. She’s blinking away the raindrops when I grab her face, pulling her to me. I kiss her hard; hoping some of her magic will rub off on me. Slowing down, I never break our connection as I concentrate on making sure this kiss lets her know how much I truly love her. When she starts to quiver, I know I’ve accomplished my goal.
“Surprise!” she yells, opening her trunk. Once we got back from our run, we took a shower, and she decided to run some errands while I talked to Xander about the contract negotiations.
Cocking my head to the side and raising an eyebrow, I peek inside the trunk. “What are we doing with these, running a daycare center?”
Shaking her head, she pouts her lips as she points to the boxes. “Do three year olds play Backgammon?” Every time she pouts her lips, all I want to do is kiss her.
“I don’t know what three year olds play, but I do know what twenty-six, soon to be twenty-seven year olds play, and it’s a lot more fun,” I answer, pulling her to me and kissing her soft lips.
She steps around the car, opens her door, and grabs what looks to be a grocery bag full of food. Walking back to the trunk, she drops it to the ground near my feet, waving her finger at me. She giggles as she takes that one step keeping us apart. “You’re lucky I love you because sometimes your humor is just wrong.”
She’s only really said the words ‘I love you’ to me twice before, but I’ll count this one. She’s texted them to me and written them in a note, but verbalizing the words seems hard for her. I’m sure it’s because of him. But I don’t want to think about that now, so I shake that thought out of my head and give my amazing girl my full attention.
Licking my lips, I feign ignorance as I ask, “What? What did I say? And what’s in the bag?”
Grinning at me, she slides her hands up my chest, wrapping them around my neck. “Don’t play dumb with me, you know exactly what you said,” she mockingly chides into my ear. “And as for the bag, you'll just have to wait and see.”
In a low whisper, as close to her ear as I can get, I ask, “About the games or having fun?”
She giggles again. God, I love that sound.
She unwraps her arms and slides her hands to my face. I hold her as she kisses me on the lips. Her mouth lingers for a few seconds as my palms rub her back. I’m getting caught up in the moment when suddenly she pulls away and swats me on the ass. “You can’t put three year olds and sexual innuendos in the same conversation! That's just all kinds of wrong.”
Crossing my arms, I narrow my eyes and point my finger at her. “I’m not the one with S.E.X. on the brain! That word never even came out of my mouth.” I spell the word pretending to scold her as she shakes her head at me.
“Come on. Help me unload these, and I might not have to punish you,” she says, grabbing and twisting my arm toward the trunk as she picks up the bag she set on the ground.
Lifting the boxes out of the car, I turn to her and grin, “If you’d have told me at the beginning of this conversation that punishment was an option, we wouldn’t be standing here right now emptying your trunk.”
She pushes me forward and grabs some boxes herself as I follow her up the stairs, staring at her beautiful ass in her jeans.
I set the games onto the counter and I turn around, holding one of the boxes. “I’ll only play Monopoly if you play by my rules.”