Page 81 of Silver Linings
“Yeah, I was probably just trying to impress you with my strength,” he confessed.
“I had such a big crush on you growing up.”
His heart beat faster. “You did?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how you didn’t figure it out. I wasn’t trying to be subtle.”
“I honestly never knew, Lil. I thought maybe in high school, something was going to happen between us, but it never did.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was going to ask you to prom after one of our tutoring sessions.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“The day I finally got up the courage, you bounced in all happy, with little hearts floating in your eyes, saying that Greg Schweitzer had asked you.”
“No…I would have turned him down if I had known. I was just glad someone finally asked me.”
“It wasn’t meant to work out just then.”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears again.
“Why does that make you sad?”
“Because maybe if it had, then Sage would be yours.”
“Sage is mine, Lil. In every single way that matters, she is mine, and she always will be.”
“I, I mean, I don’t know what to say to all that,” she smiled.
“You don’t have to say anything. How about you just get that gorgeous heart shaped ass of yours back to the dinner table and eat the pasta I cooked?”
“Okay,” she whispered before she started to walk back to the kitchen.
Before Gunner could think to stop himself, he grabbed Lily’s wrist, twisting so that her body stopped just inches away from his. Her breath hitched as he moved his fingers up her arm, enjoying how her skin pebbled beneath his touch. Her bottom lip tucked in between her teeth and Gunner let his hand leave her arm, his fingers brushing against the delicate skin of her lip and he urged her to set it free from her bite.
His hand slid into her hair, pulling her face closer to his, and in the instant her eyelids drooped and her pupils blew out, he knew she felt the same tension he’d been feeling. Finally, he was going to make up for royally messing things up between them.
As Lily moved onto her tiptoes, a ferocious cry pierced through the house. She froze, and Gunner cursed under his breath as he watched her eyes bounce between the hallway and him.
“I should…I need to go check on Sage,” Lily sighed as Gunner tried to hold her in place. “Please, Gunner.”
He let the tension in his arms go slack and watched as Lily walked out of the room.
Twenty-Six
They were back to the horribly awkward tension in the apartment since she’d almost kissed Gunner the night before. Once she’d gotten Sage settled and back to sleep, they’d finished dinner in silence. Lily didn’t know what she was thinking. Just because he said those nice things about how she looked didn’t mean he saw her as desirable. She was just confused. Why had he talked about having more kids with her? Why had he said she was his woman? The way he ran his hands down her sides and squeezed her hips…
They were friends, and he was worried about her not eating. What had he said? Oh, that they didn’t have a relationship like Gage and his wife. There wasn’t love. They were just friends.
That was all they were ever going to be, and Lily needed to get that through her head. Gunner had refused to sit down for breakfast that morning, mumbling something about needing to be at work all day for an upcoming assignment.
All it had done was make Lily sick with nerves all day. She’d successfully finished unpacking the last of Sage’s things into her bedroom, tidied the kitchen, cleaned the bathrooms, and taken a shower. By the time she’d gotten the chicken in the oven for dinner, she had convinced herself that Gunner wasn’t coming home because he was trying to come up with a way to end things between them. She ran into his bedroom and grabbed the laptop off his desk. When he came in smiling a few minutes later, she was ten listings deep into her panic search for small apartments nearby.
Before he could hang his keys up, Lily slammed the computer shut and pushed it away from her on the counter.
“Hey, I’m sorry I’m so late. Is Sage down already?” he asked as he looked at her empty swing.