“You okay now?”
He nodded. “I acted out of line back there. I’ll have to talk to my mother at some point and let her know. I won’t apologize for speaking the truth, but I shouldn’t have embarrassed her that way. I probably shouldn’t have gone.”
“I pushed you to.”
“I make my own decisions. You know that. I don’t do things I don’t want to do.”
I think he meant to absolve me of any responsibility in what had just happened, but somehow his words got under my skin. Landon was decisive and strong-willed, and hard to sway. My ability to convince him to attend his father’s wake—and subsequent funeral—had meant something to me. Because I wanted to make him better.
I wanted to be his confidant, and to have him listen to me. But what if that wish was impossible?
I twisted in my stool, so that my knees were between his legs, and we were facing one another. “So maybe you should’ve been a little more tactful.”
“I barged around like a bull.”
I snorted. “That’s true. But it’s not the end of the world. She’ll forgive you.”
“I think I’m going to buy her a house,” he said, abruptly.
“Uh,” I replied, “I mean I don’t think it would take a house to get her forgiveness.”
He shook his head. “No, not to buy her forgiveness. I tried to get her a house last year. The one she’s living in needs a new roof, new wiring. My dad didn’t keep up with any of the maintenance. So I found a nice two bed room, in walking distance to her best friend. It was in escrow and everything. But when my dad found out, he called me in a rage. Said he had provided for her for thirty years, he could do it for thirty more.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah. I can’t imagine she’ll want to stay in that place without him. Too many memories. I called my realtor yesterday, she emailed me some listings.”
“Anything good?”
“A few. One I’m confident she’ll like.”
“What will you do with the old house?”
He sipped at his beer. “Fix it up. Turn it into a rental, so my mom will have some income of her own.”
I drew a squiggly line on the condensation on my glass. “So you’ve thought of everything.”
He sighed, setting his glass down. “She deserved better than what I did today. A house is the least I can do.”
“It’s a start.”
“You’re not going back, are you?” he asked.
I crinkled my brow. “To the funeral?”
“Dallas,” he said, his eyes piercing into mine. As if he didn’t trust the answer unless he could see it there, in the depths of my gaze.
“Oh.” I licked my lips, not sure what to say. “I mean, I think so.”
He rested a hand on my knee. “You can still work for Prestige. The team would be lucky to have you.”
I frowned. “It feels like a short cut, somehow. You of all people surely understand how it feels to want to prove yourself.”
“It’s not a shortcut. You’d have to go back to school, maintain a high GPA. No one at Prestige has to know about us.”
Us. What was there to know, anyway? The fact that I was sleeping with their boss?
That I was in love with him?
I stared down at his hand on my knee, wishing that was true. “Secrets never stay hidden, Landon. People would know. And then every day when I walked through those doors, I’d be that girl who slept her way to the top.”
“I will fire anyone who dares say that about you.”
The emotion ins his voice caught me off guard. The protectiveness of it, vehemence.
I tore my gaze away from his hand, looking him dead in the eye again. “They won’t say it. They’ll think it. Surely you know what it means to earn someone’s respect. To deserve it.”
“Tell me how to make you stay,” he said. “Tell me what to do, what to say to you to keep you here.”
“See, that’s the thing,” I said, sipping at my beer. “I want you to just know without me having to tell you.”
“Maybe that’s because you don’t know what you want,” he offered.
I smiled and shook my head. “It’s not that easy, Landon.”
His thumb brushed back and forth against my bare skin.
“I won’t let you go,” he said.
I shook my head, a smile playing at the edges of my lips. “You hate it when you can’t control something, don’t you?”
“I’m used to getting what I want. And I want you. In town.”
“I’ll think about it.”
His eyes searched mine, as if there was more to the answer, more words hidden in their depths. But I was telling the truth—I didn’t know what I was going to do about the internship.
If I turned my back on it now, there wouldn’t be a third chance. And Professor Valdez wouldn’t vouch for me again.
He probably wouldn’t even let me back into the chemistry department.
“Can I ask you a question?” Landon asked.
“Sure.”