Page 67 of Stealing Home

Gavin sounded defensive, and Dom could sense the conversation was moving in the wrong direction. He opened his mouth to speak, but Gavin beat him to it.

“I left because you were panicking,” Gavin said in a rush. He breathed deeply. “And because I wasn’t.”

Dom stopped, and his pulse jumped. “What?”

“If I had stayed, there was a pretty good chance that I was going to start trying to convince both of us that all of the reasons we have for not wanting a relationship didn’t matter,” Gavin explained.

“They do matter though.”

“I know,” Gavin answered with a sigh. “That’s why I left. I wasn’t going to stand in your kitchen and try to argue us out of boundaries we’ve been clear about. Even if we did both forget them for a minute.” He paused. “And I needed some distance too.”

“From me.” It wasn’t a question, and Dom tried not to feel hurt by that when he’d said almost the same thing a few minutes earlier.

“Yeah.” Gavin’s answer was soft. “From you. From how much I like talking to you. From how easy it feels.”

Dom’s grip tightened around the phone. “I like talking to you too.”

“Good to know.” Gavin laughed quietly, but it faded quickly. “The problem was, I wasn’t sure I still believed in my own boundary. And if I didn’t believe in it anymore, going back to normal was going to be almost impossible.”

And now? Do you want more, or do you want to go back to normal? Is normal even an option anymore?

Dom bit his tongue to keep from asking questions he wasn’t sure he wanted answered. He pushed away from the counter and started pacing again, needing his body to do something while his mind kept circling back to how badly this could still go. “I didn’t want you to leave,” he admitted.

Nothing came through the phone for so long that Dom checked the screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.

“You made a pretty convincing argument for it,” Gavin finally said.

“I know.” Dom sighed and turned on his heel to walk back the other way. “I’m not good at this anymore.”

“Talking?”

“Living in the moment. Letting something happen when I don’t know what comes next.” His entire world had changed, and he had a hard time remembering the carefree lifestyle he used to live.

“Neither of us knew what came next, Dom. It was just a kiss.”

“It wasn’t just a kiss to me.”

The words came out sharper than he intended, and his whole body went rigid the second they left his mouth. Every instinct told him to backpedal, to try to soften it or make a joke that would let him pretend he hadn’t said it. Gavin didn’t answer right away, and Dom pressed his free hand against the island and counted the silence in heartbeats.

“It wasn’t to me either,” Gavin said.

Dom’s heart kicked against his ribs, hard enough that he had to press his palm against his own chest again, like he could physically hold himself together.

“That was the problem,” Dom continued. His voice had gotten shaky, and now that he’d started, the words came faster. “I couldn’t leave it there. I kept thinking about the next time, and then the time after that. About you being here, getting to know Lucia. About what happens if we try this and it goes to shit.” He swallowed. “You kissed me once, and I skipped past half a relationship to the part where somebody gets hurt.”

“You skipped a lot more than half,” Gavin said, but there wasn’t any mockery in his voice. “You skipped all of the good parts.”

Dom let out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, well, go big or go home, right?”

“You skipped past ‘big’ and went straight to catastrophe.”

“I’m ambitious.” Dom defended himself.

“You’re exhausting,” Gavin replied, a quiet laugh softening the words.

“Also true.”

Gavin exhaled loudly into the phone. “I understand why Lucia changes the way you think about things. I do. But I wasn’t asking you to hand me a key to the house or put my name on the daycare pickup list. It was a kiss.”