Page 62 of The Lunatics

“You too, Chris. Thank you for having me.”

“Anytime. Come on in.” She led us down the hall toward the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind, but you two will have to share the summerhouse again.” She shot me a look over her shoulder. “We already started converting your bedroom into a home gym.”

“Gee, thanks for waiting all of five minutes after I left.”

She smiled, but her scent was cagey. There was a gleam in her eyes that made me wonder if this was a setup. I narrowed my own at her, and she looked away. Yup. She was definitely setting us up. And after all her talk about me and Michael not jumping into bed together before we were ready. I bet if I walked upstairs right now, I’d find my room untouched.

Ugh. Parents.

Michael and I carried our overnight bags through the back slider. Dad was on the far side of the lawn, splitting firewood for later.

“Hey, you two!” he called. “Want to lend me a hand after you drop your stuff off? I could use some help.”

I expected Michael to balk at such a menial task, but he surprised me by telling Dad we’d be right out.

“I’m sorry about this,” I said when we were alone in the summerhouse. “I can sleep in the hammock outside.”

He put his bag on the bed and then shrugged out of his suit jacket. “And disappoint your mother in her matchmaking?”

“You caught that, too?”

“I did.” He paused and looked at me. “How are you?”

“Better than I thought I would be. I’m not over what we did, but I’m not nearly as freaked out by it anymore. Which makes me feel like a psychopath.”

“You’re far from a psychopath.” I guess he would know, what with his mother and all. “What happened when we got here? You felt like you were… grieving.”

“It’s complicated,” I hedged.

“Would you care to elaborate? Be as open with me as you’ve asked me to be with you?”

The man made a good point.

“This doesn’t feel like home anymore,” I told him.

A small line appeared between his brows. “And neither does the city.”

“Bingo. My definition of what home even means has… shifted.”

“To me?”

“Yeah.”

He let out a breath. “That explains a few things about my sudden inability to stomach the thought of residing with you beneath my parents’ roof. At first I thought it was because of the threat my mother represented, but now…” He waved a hand in the air in that vague way he favored.

“It’s the bond,” I said. “Forcing us to forge our own way together.”

“Whichever way that is.”

I nodded. “I still hate lying to my parents about all of this, even by omission.”

He pulled the hem of his shirt loose from his slacks and started unbuttoning it. “Would you rather tell them and risk embroiling them in city politics?”

“No. They don’t need that level of stress in their lives. And they definitely don’t need to worry about me any more than they already are.”

The last button undone, he tugged his shirt off. Beneath it he wore a sleeveless white tank. His hands fell to his belt, and I turned away, busying myself with my own luggage.

“Where is this sudden discomfort coming from?” he asked.