Page 36 of Tempted By the Safety
“Yeah.” His throat works. “I can’t do this anymore. Be your charity case, that is. I appreciate everything you did, and I mean that. Nobody’s ever, um. Nobody’s done any of that for me. But I can’t keep taking handouts from you.”
“Handouts?”
“Yeah.”
“Milo, it’s not like that.”
“It is.” He shrugs, and his shoulders don’t come all the way back down. “And I’d rather leave now than get a whole lot more hurt later.”
I’m standing before I’ve decided to, coming around the desk, and I stop in front of him, forcing him to look up.
“I’d never hurt you.”
“Yes, you would. Not on purpose. I know exactly what kind of man you are, Spencer. I’ve been living in your house for three weeks, and the worst thing I’ve found out about you is that you called a conference roomSustenance. But eventually you’ll find someone. Paige, or somebody like her. Somebody proper, and then I’ll be the guy in the guest room with the calendar, and I just… I can’t do it. I can’t be in the house for that.”
“What do you mean?”
Milo closes his eyes, and when he opens them they’re wet at the corners. “I… have feelings for you. And I don’t think I can control them.”
My stomach turns over. “Sunshine—”
He stands up and I go still, because he comes up almost level with me and lifts his chin. I hadn’t realized how tall he is, just an inch shorter than me.
“Thanks for everything you did for me, Spencer. I’ll never forget it.”
I get both hands on his waist. They go around him where the crop top leaves his sides bare, warm skin over ribs, and I turn him, walking him back the two steps to my desk until the edge of it stops him. I put my face close to his.
“And did you think,” I say evenly, “aboutmewhen you laid out that plan of yours?”
His mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
My thumbs are pressing into him and I make them ease off, but not by much, because I’m afraid he’s going to slip out of my hands if I do. “Did it occur to you, anywhere in that whole doc and the passwords and the whole speech, thatmaybeI have feelings for you too?”
He stares at me, his hands coming up and stopping short of my chest.
“I don’t know when it happened,” I say. “I’ve gone back through it and I can’t find the moment. I’ve got a wall of tape in my head on every game I’ve played, and I can’t get a read on my own. But you walked into my life and it was easy. Like it’s never been with anybody. Not with Paige or anyone else. I sat in thathallway today with your knee against mine and I didn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Milo’s shaking his head, but I keep going.
“You don’t want to be my PA, fine.” I squeeze his sides. “I get it. There’s a power thing there, and I’ve known it since day one. I’ve done a poor job of it, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. So don’t be my PA. Quit. I’ll write you a reference that gets you hired anywhere you want.”
“Spencer—”
“But don’t leave me.” My throat closes and I go through it. “I want you here. Not as my assistant. As you, Milo. Whatever you decide to do with your day.” I make myself say the rest of it, because if I stop now he’ll find a way out. “You want to finish the pastry thing? Do it. You want me to buy you a bakery? I’ll buy you a bakery. A restaurant, a shop, whatever the version is, I don’t know. I know a real estate guy in Brooklyn and I’ll have it inside a month.”
He sputters. “Spencer, you can’t just—”
“I can and I will.”
“That’s… No. That’s not… Do you hear yourself?”
“You’ve been eleven kinds of useful to me since the second you got here. But the eggs aren’t why. The calendar isn’t why. You could have never picked up a single call for me, and I’d still be standing right here saying the same thing.” My hands slide back and up around his ribs and I hold him where he stands. “This is the part I need you to get: you don’t have to earn any of this. You never did.”
He looks at me and doesn’t blink, but the tears go over. He doesn’t wipe them, and his mouth is trembling at the corner.
He gets a breath in. “You’re crazy.”
I laugh, and it takes me by surprise, and then I’m wet-eyed too, which I haven’t been in years.
