Page 93 of Shifted Desire

There’s a long silence, my pulse whooshing in my ears as Nathan swallows hard and lets his gaze track over my face, searching me for something.

“I shouldn’t.” Another pause. “But I do.”

My world rearranges itself at that handful of words, finally accepting Nathan is all in. He’s willing to risk blowing up his lifetime of friendship with my parents to be with me. And gods help me, I’m considering letting him.

“Okay.”

“Don’t just say okay, Sam. Okay can mean anything.”

I huff, struggling to find the right words. Battling with the selfish desire to throw caution to the wind with no regard for what the fallout will be.

“I want them to know,” I whisper.

Nathan’s lips downturn slightly. “Why do I sense a ‘but’ coming?”

“Because I’m scared. I don’t want it to be a secret, but I can’t be the one who messes things up again. My sisters are already so convinced that I’m going to ruin Max’s wedding with my typical bullshit, and if we come clean about…us…” I stumble, unsure if I should call it a relationship even though it absolutely is. “If we tell them before the wedding, they’ll be right. I can’t do that to Max.”

Nathan surprises me when a smile splits his lips. “Then we wait until after the wedding. I’m not going anywhere.”

After tonight, after everything he’s done to prove himself to me, I believe him.

“Okay.”

Nathan laughs at my reply, and I lean in to kiss him. When our lips part, he raises a brow at me.

I chuckle. “Okay, as in, we’ll wait and tell them after the wedding. But we will tell them.”

Nathan leans in to kiss me again, but there’s movement near the entrance of the club, making us suddenly aware of our surroundings. Ducking down and giggling like naughty teens, we wait a beat before he starts the car and pulls out onto the road.

“Are you hungry?”

I nod. “Starving.”

We pull into the drive-through of a 24-hour burger place and get an obscene amount of food, the fat and salt a delicious capstone to the evening.

We chat about the club, work gossip, a new seahorse documentary, and all kinds of random things, laughing in the glow of the fast-food parking lot’s neon sign.

Nathan crumples up his burger wrapper, a weird, lopsided smile twisting his lips

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

He shakes his head. “No. I was thinking… What if we go to the wedding together?”

I stop mid-shoving a fry in my mouth and sputter.

He pats my back. “Not as dates, per se. But your sisters want you to have someone with you, so I can be that someone. We can tell them it’s because we didn’t want to get stuck sitting next to someone we don’t know, and you didn’t want to bring a random person with you.”

I frown, even though I love the thought of having him as my wedding date. “They’re going to know something is up.”

“They’ll be too busy paying attention to the bride and groom to give a shit about us. And if they do sense something…maybe it’d be a way to ease them into the idea. Plant a seed, so to speak, so it’s not as shocking later.”

“You just want an excuse to dance with me at the reception,” I tease.

“Can you blame me?” He kisses my hand, and it’s so sweet there’s no way I’m going to say no.

“It’s not the worst idea.”

He snorts. “Wow, thanks. Is that a yes?”