I shook my head. “That’s not necessary.” I hadn’t finished my spreadsheet yet and I was not walking on a car lot without knowing exactly what I wanted and what it was worth.
“We’ve already got plans to look at cars today,” Knox announced.
Crabby Viking says what? Car shopping plans were news to me. And unlike having a boyfriend, the purchase of a car wasn’t nearly as easy to fake for my parents.
He drew me into his side. It was a possessive move that both confused me and turned me on. “Figured I’d take Naomi and Waylay to look for a ride,” he said.
Dad harrumphed.
“I get to come too?” Waylay asked, climbing up on her knees on the barstool.
“Well, since it’s our car, you have to help me decide,” I told her.
“Let’s get a motorcycle!”
“No,” my mother and I answered together.
“Well, I’m getting one as soon as I’m old enough.”
I closed my eyes, trying to ward off all the catastrophes that rolled through my mind like a high school driver’s ed filmstrip. “I’ve changed my mind. You’re grounded until you’re thirty-five.”
“I don’t think you can legally do that,” Waylay said.
“Sorry, Witty. I’m with the kid on this one,” Stef said, leaning on his elbows next to her at the island. He broke a piece of bacon in half and handed one piece to my niece.
“Gotta vote with Way,” Knox said, squeezing my shoulder, one of those sort-of smiles dancing at the corners of his lips. “You can only ground her until she’s eighteen.”
Waylay punched a fist into the air victoriously and took a bite of bacon.
“Fine. You’re grounded until you’re eighteen. And no fair ganging up on me,” I complained.
“Uncle Stef,” Waylay said, her eyes going wide and solemn. “This is the best bacon I’ve ever had in my life.”
“I told you,” Stef said triumphantly. He slapped a hand onto the counter. The dogs, mistaking the noise for a knock, raced to the front door in a fit of barking.
“Got some news,” Liza announced. “Nash is coming home.”
“That’s awfully soon, isn’t it?” I asked. The man had two bullet holes in him. It seemed like that deserved more than a few days in the hospital.
“He’s going stir-crazy cooped up in there. He’ll do better at home,” Liza predicted.
Knox nodded in agreement.
“Well, that means his place will need a good cleaning. Can’t have germs getting in bullet wounds now, can we?” Mom said as if she knew people who got shot every day.
“Probably need some food too,” Dad chimed in. “Bet everything in his fridge is rotten. I’ll start a list.”
Liza and Knox exchanged confounded looks. I grinned.
“It’s the Witt Way,” I explained. “It’s best to just go with it.”
* * *
“I sleptwith Knox twice in the last forty-eight hours and then I slept with him slept with him last night. And I don’t know how much of it’s a mistake. And it was just supposed to be one time and definitely no sleeping, but he keeps changing the rules on me,” I blurted out to Stef.
We were on Liza’s front porch, waiting for Waylay to get her stuff so we could go back to the cottage and get ready for premature car shopping. It was the first time I’d gotten him alone since The Sex…and subsequent arrival of my parents.
We’d been trading texts for the last two days.
“You did it again? I knew it! I fuck—freaking knew it,” he said, dancing from foot to foot.
“Great. Congratulations, Mr. Know It All. Now tell me what it all means?”
“How the hell should I know what it means? I’m the one who chickened out on asking that fine AF salon god for his phone number.”
My jaw dropped. “Excuse me, but Stefan Liao has never chickened out on a hot guy before.”
“Let’s not make this about me and my temporary mental break. Go back to the sex part. Was it good?”
“Phenomenal. Best sex ever. Now I’ve trapped him in something resembling a relationship and I have no idea what to say to Way about it. I don’t want her thinking that it’s okay to jump from relationship to relationship. Or that it’s not okay to be alone. Or that it’s okay to have a one-night stand with a hot guy.”
“Hate to break it to you, Little Miss Uptight, but all of those things actually are okay.”
“Thirty-six-year-old adult woman me knows that,” I snapped. “But those things don’t look okay in the eyes of family court, and is that really the example I want to set for an eleven-year-old?”
“I can see you’ve entered the over-analyzing everything part of your freak-out,” Stef quipped.
“Stop being a jerk and start telling me what to do!”
He reached out and squished my cheeks between his hands. “Naomi. Did it ever occur to you that maybe this is your chance to start living a life you choose? Start doing things you want to do?”
“No,” I said.
The screen door burst open, and Waylay jumped out with Waylon on her heels. “I can’t find my math book.”
“Where did you see it last?” I asked her.
“If I knew that, I’d know where it was.”
The three of us headed in the direction of the cottage. Waylon darted out in front of us, pausing every few feet to sniff things and pee on them.
“Does Knox know you have his dog?” I asked.
“Dunno.” Waylay shrugged. “So are you and Knox a thing?”
I stumbled over my own feet.
Stef snickered unsympathetically next to me.
I blew out a breath. “Honestly, Way. I have no idea. I don’t know what we are or what I want from him or what he wants from me. So we probably won’t be a thing forever. But we might be spending more time with him for a while. If it’s okay with you.”
She frowned thoughtfully at the ground as she kicked at a stone. “You mean you wouldn’t hang out with him and stuff if I didn’t want you to?”
“Well, yeah. You’re kind of pretty important to me, so your opinion matters.”
“Huh. Then I guess he can come over for dinner tonight if he wants to,” she said.
* * *
Nash was homeand resting in his freshly cleaned and restocked apartment. My parents were celebrating their weekly date night with dinner at a five-star Lebanese restaurant in Canton. Liza had invited Stef to be her “hot date” for a dinner party at a local “fancy-ass horse farm.”
As for me, I had a new (to me) SUV in my driveway, and my sort-of boyfriend and niece were in the backyard building a fire in the fire pit while I put away the leftovers.
Waylon was in the kitchen with me in case I dropped any of the aforementioned leftovers.
“Fine. But don’t think you can look at me with that droopy face and get a treat every time,” I warned the dog as I reached into the mason jar of dog treats I hadn’t been able to resist at Nina’s dad’s pet shop.
Waylon wolfed down his biscuit with an appreciative full-butt wiggle.
“Ouch! Damn it!”
“Waylay! Language!” I yelled.
“Sorry!” she called back.
“Busted,” Knox sang not quite quietly enough.
“Knox!”
“Sorry!”
I shook my head.
“What are we going to do with them?” I asked Waylon.
The dog belched and wagged his tail.
Outside, Waylay gave a triumphant whoop, and Knox punched both fists in the air as sparks became flames. They high-fived.
I snapped a picture of them celebrating and sent it to Stef.
Me: Spending the evening with two pyromaniacs. How’s your night going?
He responded less than a minute later with a close-up of a dignified-looking horse.
Stef: I think I’m in love. How sexy would I be as a horse farmer?
Me: The sexiest.
“Aunt Naomi!” Waylay burst through the screen door as I wiped down the counter tops. “We got the fire started. We’re ready for s’mores!”
She had dirt on her face and grass stains on her t-shirt. But she looked like a happy eleven-year-old.
“Then I guess we’d better get them started.” With a flourish, I pulled the dish towel off the s’mores platter I’d assembled.
“Whoa.”
“Let’s go, ladies,” Knox called from outside.
“You heard the man,” I said, nudging her toward the door.
“He makes you smile.”
“What?”
“Knox. He makes you smile. A lot. And he looks at you like he likes you a lot.”
I felt my cheeks flush. “Oh, yeah?”
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s cool.”
We ate too many s’mores and sat around the campfire until dark. I expected Knox to make an excuse to head home, but he followed us inside and helped me clean up while Waylay—and Waylon—went upstairs to brush her teeth.
“I think my dog is in love with your niece,” Knox observed. He pulled an open bottle of wine and a beer out of the fridge.
“There’s definitely a crush happening,” I agreed.
He pulled out a wine glass, filled it, and handed it to me.
Okay, maybe there were two crushes happening.
“Thanks for dinner,” he said, opening his beer and leaning back against the counter.
“Thanks for haranguing the sales guy into submission,” I said.
“It’s a good vehicle,” he said, hooking his fingers in the waist of my shorts and drawing me closer.
We’d spent the majority of the day together, but without touching. It had been a special kind of torture to be so close to a man who made me feel so much I forgot to think yet not be able to reach out and touch him.