Page 92 of Not on the Same Page

I love you, each motion says, and I can’t believe I never saw it before.

“Casey,” I start shakily, but he stops me with a kiss to my lips.

“Not right now, baby. I’ll be back.”

“Okay.” My voice is small, like a child’s. I feel like a child in a lot of ways.

Casey goes into his bedroom for a few minutes and comes back out wearing dry clothes and holding more folded in his arms. He sets those aside, then rubs me with the towel and dresses me in one of his T-shirts and boxers, rolling the waistband so they sit on the fullest part of my hips.

He leads me to the couch where he instructs me to sit and covers me with a blanket before taking our wet clothes to the dryer in a closet next to his kitchen and tossing them in. Finally, he comes back to the couch and finds my hands under the blanket so he can hold them.

“You want to talk about it?”

“I want to tell you I’m sorry first.”

Taking a moment to look over my face, he narrows his eyes thoughtfully, pursing his lips. “You were doing your job. I…” He sighs deeply. “I’ve been pretty insecure since I took this role, and Ashton probably sensed it. He played right into my worries, and when you asked⁠—”

“I shouldn’t have.” I lean forward in earnest.

Shaking his head, he squeezes my hands. “You were just doing your job,” he repeats, each word a staccato emphasis. “Speaking of which…you’ve had quite the eventful couple of days.”

“I quit,” I say quickly. “That might actually be the best thing that’s happened to me since…well, since the last time I saw you.”

He chuckles, and the sound does more to warm me than the blanket covering half my body. “Why did you quit?”

“Because Suzanna sucks. She wanted us to work with Ashton or use him to leverage more from you. She accused me of costing the agency money and threatened to put me on probation so I just…quit.” I shrug, shifting my gaze so I’m studying the pattern on the blanket instead of looking at him. “But the more I thought about it, the more I kind of hoped maybe we could… If I wasn’t working for her, maybe I’d be less worried about it. I was going to find a way to tell you, but I fell asleep and then…” I shrug again.

Casey brings a hand to my chin, turning my face to look at him. He raises his dark eyebrows. “You quit your job for me?”

I scoff. “No. I quit my job for me. But…” I drag my bottom lip through my teeth, meeting his gaze. “I love you too, Casey. You’re the first person I thought to come see tonight. You’re the one who heals me, who makes me whole. I’m tired of pretending to be anything but in love with you. I want to be. Fully. And I think the first step toward that was to leave Northbridge.”

Wordlessly, he draws me closer to him and lies back so his arms are wrapped around me and my head is resting on his chest. We lie like that for a while, until the thunder stops and the rain slows to a quiet patter against his windowpane.

“I can’t work on young adult titles and be with you, though,” I say quietly.

Casey starts to stroke my hair in a soothing motion. “We can figure that out later.” His voice vibrates through my cheek.

“I have plan for that.” I trace a line up and down his stomach, feeling the ridges of muscle under the soft fabric of his T-shirt. “What I don’t have a plan for is my mom.”

His hand doesn’t stop moving through my hair. “Do you want to talk about it?”

No, I don’t, but he deserves to know. And if I’m going to love him fully like I just said I want to, I have to have faith that he won’t run away screaming.

“I haven’t talked to her since I was fifteen.” I swallow hard. “There’s a lot of backstory, but…”

“We have time,” he says when I can’t continue. “Now or ten years from now. I’m not going anywhere.”

A tear slips out of the corner of my eye and darkens his shirt where it lands. It’s as if he knew I needed to hear that, which shouldn’t surprise me. He always knows what I need.

“She asked my aunt for my number, which I found out about when we were in Denver.”

“Ah.” He squeezes me tighter. “That’s why you called me for dinner.”

“It’s not the only reason,” I assure him, nestling closer in the crook of his arm. “But even then, on some level, I knew you could make it hurt less. That you could help me.”

“I’m glad you called,” he says after a long pause. “I’m glad you came tonight.”

“Me too.”