Page 35 of Sharp Lies

Still. I let the smile grow and shrugged. “Does fetch really require more than one human?”

His own lips twisted up into a smile, and he shrugged back. “Of course. One human does the throwing. The other does the supervising. Someone has to make sure the thrower is doing it right.”

“Oooooh,” I said, like he’d just explained something I’d always wondered about. “Evidently Silver never properly explained the rules to me. I didn’t realize.”

He climbed over the fence in one smooth motion and walked up to me like he had every right to be there and was actually doing me a favor. “Then I guess you’re lucky I came around and told you. Otherwise you’d still be playing it wrong.”

My breath stilled in my throat at this, and I gave myself a mental shake. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d seen this man several times over the past week and I’d never reacted like he was anything more than just my neighbor. I mean sure, he’d held my hand and taken me out to dinner, but those were just neighborly things you did with your... neighbor.

I’d also held him when he was in the midst of some sort of panic attack. But again. Being neighborly.

Right?

Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know if it was the sunshine or the cocky grin on his face or the vibes he was giving off, like he’d just woken up this morning and chosen to charm the world, but something had changed.

And I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that I’d let him take me out last night and had sat there and listened while he told me about how he grew up and why he’d had trouble coming back into normal society when he got out of the Marines. Could it be that he’d been holding himself so still, so sure that people wouldn’t want to hear from the real him, that he’d been frozen in place? And if that was true, had listening to him unleashed him?

I mean, if me listening had turned him into this charming, smiling hunk, I wasn’t going to complain.

“Well heaven forbid I play fetch wrong,” I said, still smiling as I turned and threw the ball.

For the next hour or so, he watched me throw the ball and wait for Silver to retrieve it, then throw it again, and as I threw, we talked about little things that didn’t matter much. I told him about the towns I’d been to and what I’d done there. The million and one music festivals I’d been to and the people I’d met there, and the friends I’d promised to keep in touch with. And before long, I was remembering that free and easy life and how I hadn’t had any responsibilities or worries about a house or an ex-boyfriend who didn’t want me in town. Silver and I had been so happy on the road, and though I’d gotten back to Oakville, remembered how much I loved it, and didn’t want to leave my mother again, there was something to be said for the freedom of the nomadic life I’d had before.

“Would you ever do that sort of thing?” I asked Warren suddenly. “I mean get out there on the road and just stay there, letting each day be something brand new?”

“I couldn’t,” he answered immediately. “It sounds like a lot of fun and I can imagine it being everything a younger person would want out of life, but I could never do it.”

“Why not?”

“I like stability too much. I like knowing where I’m going to wake up and that I’ll recognize the view when I look through the window. I like knowing that I have that sort of safety.”

Safety. It wasn’t something I would have expected him to want.

“What about moving to a new city?”

“Out of Oakville? I don’t think so. I’ve loved this city since the day I set foot in it, and I love that I was able to buy a house here. I loved traveling with the Marines until I didn’t, and then all I could think about was having a base. A place I would always be able to call my own. I spent so much time in the Middle East with nothing to my name but the boots on my feet, and even those were given to me by the military. I didn’t have a house, I didn’t have my own room, and I didn’t have any control over where I was going that day. That sort of thing wears on you.”

“And before that...” I murmured.

He huffed and shook his head. “Before that, I had a house, but it wasn’t a home, and I had people, but they weren’t family. I want to know I belong, and that the people I’m around love me enough to want to keep me there. I want...”

He stopped and stared at me, his eyes hungry and yearning like he knew exactly what he wanted but was afraid to say it. He looked at me like I was what he wanted.

“What do you want?” I whispered.

“I want to have someone I can call my own, and know I can always come back to her at the end of the day,” he murmured back. “I want the house and the dog and the kitchen with a fridge full of good things to eat. I want to sit and watch movies at night with someone I love, and then take her to bed and keep her safe from the world outside. And I just don’t see how I could do any of that out there on the road.”

He took a step toward me like he was being pulled, and I didn’t get out of his way. I stood right where I was.

“It does seem like it would be sort of hard to take a house out on the road,” I answered, my voice still low and emotions raging through me. I didn’t know what we were even talking about anymore, or who we were talking about. I didn’t know where this sudden tension had come from or why my body felt like it was about to melt with anticipation.

I didn’t know who this gorgeous, vulnerable man was, either, because he certainly wasn’t the same man who had yelled at me for letting Silver into his yard.

“Well, you can,” he said with a slight smile. “But the house isn’t going to hold together very well.”

“What’s the point of a house if it’s not going to hold together?” I asked.

He took another step toward me, and I put a hand against his chest, though I couldn’t have said why. I didn’t want him to stop, not really. I didn’t want to keep him away. Because now that he was opening himself to me, I wanted, more than anything, to dive right into him and drink my fill.