Page 131 of End Game

We talk about… everything. Marriage. She’s fine waiting until we’re twenty-five, even though she disagrees with the reasons I want to wait. I know it will devastate her if her father isn’t there when the time comes, but there’s no reason we need to rush this step, either. She wants kids—a whole house full of kids, she was lonely growing up an only child, so she wants a large family. I’m on board with that… provided we wait until we’re both out of school first.

“This shouldn’t be this easy,” Diana says over dessert.

“What do you mean?”

“We agree on… everything.”

“We don’t agree on everything,” I contradict. “We’re compatible in the things that are important to us, and the things we aren’t, we can figure out a compromise.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Like… my parents. Like what to do on a Saturday night. Like where we want to live after graduation,” I explain. “Do I enjoy watching movie musicals? Not particularly. But you do, so I’m happy to watch them with you. Do you like going to basketball games? Not particularly. So I’ll take my brother, or you can hang out in the suite during the game, and we can meet up afterwards.”

“You’d be okay with that?”

“We don’t have to be attached at the hip just because we’re a couple. Sure, I want to spend all my time with you. But we both have our own lives. We can’t lose sight of who we are individually for who we are as a couple.”

Diana pouts. “I like who we are as a couple.”

“I do, too.” Leaning across the table, I take her hand in mine and kiss her knuckles. “Think of it as friends with benefits with feelings,” I say.

She laughs. “Friends with benefits with feelings?”

“It can be casual, it can be serious, or it can be anything in between. My feelings aren’t going to magically go away just because we have a fight or hit a rough patch. I know you, and you know me, and we’ve been through enough over the years that I think we can get through pretty much anything.”

Including her dad…

“I think we can, too.” Her smile turns a little sad. “My dad doesn’t want me to marry you or have kids with you right away.”

“Neither do I,” I tell her honestly.

She blinks. “But…”

“We have our own timeline. There’s no need to press fast forward on our life together. I don’t care if it takes us a year or five years or ten. What’s important to me is having you in my life. The rest? We can figure it out later. For now, it’s about us.”

Chapter 39

Diana

“This has been the perfect evening,” I say as we walk back to Athlete’s Village hand in hand.

“You’re perfect,” Barrett says immediately, and I laugh and curl closer to his body.

“You just want to get laid,” I tease, and he stops in the middle of the road.

“You’re perfect,” he says again, meeting my eyes. “I would never lie to you or manipulate you to get you into my bed. I love you just the way you are, perfect imperfections and all.”

My heart twists. I care for him so fucking much. I squeeze his hand, and he pulls me into a hug in the middle of the street.

“You’re amazing, Dee,” he says quietly into my ear.

I sniff. “You’re really good for my ego.”

He laughs and drops a kiss to the top of my head. “I can be really good for other parts of you, too.”

It’s my turn to laugh. “I know you said you wanted second dessert…”

“Yeah?”