It couldn’t have gotten any better, but it did, because she clung to him. Polly clung to him, like he’d been the one to wreck her. Everything and nothing made sense. Which was confusing. But he would figure it out when his heart wasn’t trapped in his throat, beating with enough zeal to crush a windpipe.
“What the hell are we going to do about anything?”
Polly was silent a moment before she started laughing into his neck. A full, content sound that made Austin want to buy the house and live in it forever, just praying for an echo of that laugh. “You say the best things when you don’t think about them first,” she murmured.
Replaying that sentiment in his head on repeat, Austin cracked open one eye to see a black fur ball just beyond Polly’s shoulder, watching them from his perch on the windowsill. “A cat was watching us that whole time. I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or outraged.”
“Be whatever you want. Just don’t make a * joke.”
A corner of Austin’s lip turned up. “I wasn’t even thinking about it. You’ve ruined me.” He tightened his hold around Polly’s huddled form. “When I promised you holding, this is not what I pictured.”
She yawned against his shoulder. “I think the breaking and entering was a nice twist.” A heavy passage of silence ensued—one that made him worry—but she broke it before he could descend into full panic mode. “I’m sorry I left. I was just…losing myself. In the planning, the strong-arming of our friends. I needed to take a breather.” When she tilted her head back to meet his eyes, Austin had to bite his tongue to keep from shouting I love you. “But…I’m glad you came. I was so anxious all morning and right before…right before I saw you in the park, I realized it was from missing you.”
Breathe. Breathe. Missing someone was a long way off from loving, so he needed to keep his shit together until she got there, too. And he had to have faith that she would. Otherwise what was the point of living anymore? “Polly, I don’t want you to lose yourself. I can amend the plan to leave you out of it. I—”
“No.” She shook her head. “No. I need to know I played a part in ending the pain he causes. I need to be involved or I’ll always regret it.”
Austin swallowed hard. “What if you regret being involved even more? I can relate to that, sweet. It’s an ugly feeling and you’re too beautiful to feel it.”
Time seemed to suspend between them, a brutal ticking of time wherein Austin wondered if he’d said something wrong. In the end, she reached up and smoothed his eyebrow with her thumb. “Do you want to come meet my father?”
Chapter Seventeen
Amazing. The offer of meeting her father hadn’t been made in some postorgasmic haze. And it was some motherfucker of a haze Austin had left her in. On the twenty-minute walk back to her father’s condo, she’d kept expecting to get cold feet. After all, she was about to introduce Reitman’s ex-partner to the man whose life had been obliterated by the very same con. On a scale of chess team captain to unemployed musician, Austin broke the suitable boyfriend scale in half. Then sank it to the bottom of the Chicago River.
But as they’d walked along a back route toward the condo, hands brushing several times before Austin had taken hold of hers with a muttered “grow a pair,” she’d actually started to look forward to the introduction. Drake was an open-minded person who trusted her judgment. And if there were a few bumps along the way to pleasant, Austin knew better than anyone how to take a jab.
Polly frowned over at Austin, who was staring at their joined hands out of the corner of his eye. She didn’t appreciate him having to take so many jabs, or that she’d been the one to deliver them for so long. If everyone could look a little deeper, the way she’d done recently, they would see that he wasn’t the sum of his arrogance. And he was plenty arrogant, but he only used it to hide his generosity, his need to please. Polly flushed at the last part. When they got back to Chicago, she would set about rectifying everyone’s assumption that they could treat Austin like scum stuck to the bottom of their shoes.
“What are you glowering at, sweet?” He lifted her hand to his mouth, breathing on her knuckles. “Do we need to break into another house and traumatize a second feline?”
Stomach twisting in a slow knot, she looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “Not right this second, but I reserve the right to make the request at a later date.”
His grip tightened on her hand. “I told you, I don’t accept requests from you.”
She welcomed the tingle of power in her limbs. The more she grew accustomed to the rush, the better it felt. “I’ll tell you when I want it.”
Austin dipped his chin. “Better. So what were you really thinking about?”
The touch of vulnerability in his tone drew honesty out of her. No more holding back. “I was thinking, I can’t wait for the next squad meeting so I can sit beside you again.” The words ached on their way out. “That I’m sorry I missed the chance last time.”