“So the women your brothers fell in love with, they committed bodily harm to them and that’s how you guys knew it was real?”

“We kind of have a rule. If a woman punches you in the face, you have to marry her.” He laughs.

“I didn’t punch you.”

“Same difference,” he says. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

I set my wineglass on the side table when I realize it’s empty.

“I do want to talk to you about something, though,” he says. He’s quiet and serious and he stops rubbing my leg. He wraps his hand around my ankle.

“Okay,” I say hesitantly.

“With all the chemo, the chances of my ever having kids are slim.” His eyes are full of pain. “There’s probably no chance at all.” He jerks a thumb toward the hallway. “Would you be satisfied with three kids and no more?”

I lay my head back and laugh. “You think I need more than three?”

“I just want to be completely honest with you. I can’t get you pregnant. So if you wanted to have a baby, I’m not the guy for you, and I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

I gesture to his lap. “Everything…works? Right?” Heat creeps up my cheeks. He lifts my foot and presses it closer to his zipper.

“Everything works,” he says quietly. He’s fully hard against the side of my foot, and I feel like my face is aflame with embarrassment, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“I have a question for you now,” I say. I don’t even know how to phrase it, but I have to ask. “My kids,” I say. “They’re not blond haired and blue eyed. Would that be a problem for you?”

We’re totally putting the cart before the horse here, and I feel stupid even asking these questions of a man I just met, but I like him. I like him a lot.

“Your kids are perfect,” he says. “I would be honored to spend time with them.”

“But, like…” I drop my face in my hands. I can’t get what Phillip said to me out of my head. “But…would you be okay being with them in public and having people think they’re yours? And mine?” I gesture back and forth between us. “Not that I’m trying to give you my kids or anything, but we’re sort of a package deal.”

“I like the package,” he says. “And I’d be honored for anyone in the world to think those kids were mine, if we ever got that point in our relationship.”

“This is a relationship?” I ask. I’m grinning like a fool, though.

“Not yet,” he says. “Right now, I’m just a crazy guy you just met who divested you of your stockings and wants to touch your feet.” He looks down at my toes and tickles them. He looks me in the face. “So, now you want to fall in love with me?” he asks. “You did hit me in the face, so I’m obligated to marry you at some point.”

I toss my hands up. “Or we could just hang out,” I say with a laugh.

He nods. “That sounds nice.” He smiles at me.

“So why hasn’t some lucky woman snatched you up yet?” I ask again.

“I have issues.” He chuckles, but then he sobers. “I do have some trust issues. And, while I am in remission, I live each day knowing I could get sick again. I don’t like wasting time because it’s one of the only things in life we can’t get more of. So, I know I’m moving really fast and I’m probably scaring the shit out of you, but that’s how I roll. I love hard when I love, and I hope you’re okay with that.”

I scoff. “Don’t tell me you’re in love with me when you just met me. I’d have to call you a liar.”

“No, I’m not in love with you…yet. But for the first time in a long time, I want to chase this feeling and see where it goes.”

“So, I’m the chasee, huh?” I ask. My heart thrills at the idea of it.

“Oh, I plan to chase you. Provided that you’d welcome my advances.” His hand slides up and tickles the back of my knee, and I’d welcome just about any advances he wants to lay on me. “Just one more thing,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“Once I fall in love with you, don’t ever cheat on me. If you want to be done with me, tell me. But don’t lie to me or cheat on me. It’ll make me hate you. And all I want to do is love you. Someday. When we’re both ready.”

I’m ready now. But I’m not at the same time. “Deal,” I say.

He lays his head back against the sofa and tilts it to look at me. “So, can I keep playing with your feet?” His eyes are full of all sorts of things I don’t understand, but I like it. I like it a lot.

I sit forward and pull my feet out of his lap. He pouts until I put my bottom in it instead. I take his face in my hands and look into his eyes. “I like you a lot,” I whisper.

“Not in love with me yet, though?” he whispers back, but his hands wrap around my hip and lock beside me, holding me close to him.

“Not yet,” I say.

He rubs his nose against mine in gentle little sweeps up and down, his eyes closed. My lips are so close to his that I can almost taste him. But suddenly, he picks me up and plops me down on the couch. He stands up, adjusts his jeans, and kisses my forehead. “I have to go,” he says quickly.

“What?” I sputter. I was about to kiss him.

“Thanks for letting me hang out with the kids tonight. It was a lot of fun bowling with your family.”

I suddenly feel empty, and I don’t like it. “Thanks for dropping everything when Seth called you. And for the pizza.” And thanks for flipping my world upside down.

I stand up and follow him to the door. He looks down at me from the doorway and brushes my hair back behind my ear. “I want to kiss you.”

“You totally should,” I toss back.

He shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says. “Are you working from home tomorrow?”

“No, I have to go in to the office.” I have a big case that I’ve been working on, and we need to have team meeting.

“When can I see you again?” he asks.

I can’t bite back my grin. “When do you want to see me again?”

“Every day, all day.” He laughs. God, when that man smiles, he could knock me to my knees. “Can I call you?”

I nod.

“Good,” he says.

He turns and walks away from me. I step out into the hallway and call toward his back. “That’s it?” I ask.

“For now,” he calls back, but he’s laughing. He waves at me as the elevator doors close, and I sag back against the wall.

That wasn’t very nice. But I’m grinning when I go back into the apartment.

Matt

God, that was hard. I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone so much in my life. But she’s not ready for me. I can tell. She’s not ready for the kind of want I have inside me. Hell, I’m not sure I’m ready for it, either. But I want to be, and that’s a good place to start.

I have a little spring in my step on the way back to Reed’s. I feel bad leaving the way I did earlier, right in the middle of a tattoo. But Seth needed me, and to be honest, I wanted to see Sky.

It’s hard to admit that with everything I’ve been given in life, I haven’t appreciated it enough. I’ve gotten second and third chances that most people will never have. But even after all that, I’ve just been coasting. She makes me want to do more than coast. She makes me want to pedal hard.

I walk into the shop, and I’m glad when I just see Logan and Pete. Logan is two years younger than me, but he’s wicked smart. Pete’s the youngest, barely twenty-one, but he’s in a serious relationship just like Logan, and I want to pick their brains a little.

“Everything okay?” Logan asks. Logan is deaf, but his speech is excellent, so he speaks to us. When we talk back to him, we sign and speak at the same time so he doesn’t miss anything. Logan didn’t talk for years, not until he met Emily and she made him open his mouth. Now he rarely shuts up.

“Fine,” I reply. “I just went over to Skylar’s.”

Pete’s eyes narrow at me. “What the f**k happened to your nose?” he asks.

I look in the mirror over the sink. The skin under my eyes is a little purple, and I imagine there’s a good chance I’ll have two black eyes by tomorrow morning.

“Skylar hit me,” I say.

Pete snorts. “Shut the f**k up,” he says when I just look at him. “She really hit you?”

“It was an accident,” I say. “We were playing Wii bowling, and the controller flew out of her hand.” I touch my nose. It actually hurts like a motherfucker.

“You’ll have to marry her,” Logan says. “It’s a rule.” But he’s laughing. I’m not.

“Yeah, I am kind of headed in that direction,” I say. I don’t look at either of them because I feel like they’ll see right through me. They always have been able to.

“What?” Logan rolls his chair over toward me so he can look directly at me.

“You saw what I said,” I say.

He arches his brow. “I just want to be sure I saw it right.”

I shove his chair with my foot, and he skids across the floor. “You saw it right.”

“Already?” Pete says. He sits down across from me. “You just met her.”

“How long was it before you knew you wanted Reagan?” I ask. I can’t shove Pete away because he’s not on wheels.

“Seconds,” he says. He doesn’t even blink.

I look at Logan. “And you?” I ask.

“I never wanted Reagan,” Logan says. Pete punches him in the arm, and he throws up his hands in surrender. “Minutes.” He looks at me. Logan has this way of looking into your soul. He has to read people based on their body language, and I’m afraid he’s reading all of mine. “Wow,” he breathes. “You like her that much.”

I nod. “Yeah.” I scoff. “I’m not in love with her or anything”—I might as well be honest—“but I can’t get her off my mind.”

“You done her yet?” Pete asks.

“Done her?” I repeat.

He makes a crude gesture with his hands. “Done her,” he says again.

“God, no,” I breathe. “I haven’t even kissed her.”

“Wow,” Logan says again.

“Would you stop saying that?” I gripe.

“You want to kiss her,” Pete says.

“I want to do all sorts of things with her,” I admit. “But she’s special.”

“Wow,” Logan says again.

“Cut it out!” I shove his shoulder.

“I remember when I brought Emily home. She slept in my bed for a long time before we ever had sex. It wasn’t about that. It was about those quiet, intimate moments. Those were what mattered. They fed my soul.” Leave it to Logan to hit the nail on the head.

“Yeah,” I say. Like that.

“I wanted to f**k her, too, but not until I knew it was permanent.” His comment is crass, and someone else might find it crude and uncaring, but I find it honest.

“Same here,” Pete tosses out. “That’s how you know the right one. When you would take hearing her voice over getting your rocks off.”

I nod. I don’t know what else to say. Pete shoves my shoulder. “I’m happy for you?”

“Are you asking me?”

He shrugs. “Sort of. I don’t know what to tell you. If she’s the one, you’ll know it.”

“What about April?” Logan asks.

“What about her?” Why would he bring April up now?

“Not too long ago, she was still on your mind. That changed?” Logan asks.

“Yeah. A lot.” I tug the rubber band from my hair and let it fall around my face. I run my fingers through it to buy myself some time. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“That’s the beauty of love,” Pete sings.

“I’m not in love with her,” I challenge.

“Not yet. But there’s a possibility.”

“Yeah.” A lot of possibility. I grin.

“Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?” Logan asks.

I shake my head. “Not anymore. They broke up.”

Logan’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything.

“She gave me the impression that he didn’t like the idea of raising biracial kids.” I wince because I don’t even like saying it out loud.

“How do you feel about that?” Logan asks.

“Kids are kids,” I say. We have been exposed to so many types of people, and with Logan’s disability, we learned early what’s important in life. And now that Pete’s working with disabled kids and kids from the youth detention center, he often brings them home and we’re exposed even more. It doesn’t matter what your outsides look like; it’s your insides that count. “I want them almost as much as I want her,” I admit. “I’d be honored to have a place in their lives. Any place they’ll let me have.”

Logan still looks flummoxed.

“Stop looking at me like I’ve gone apeshit.”

Logan shakes his head. “I’m just surprised,” he admits.

“Me, too.”

Pete claps a hand on my shoulder. “When do we get to meet her again?” he asks.

“Bring her around you guys?” I blow out a breath. “You have to be crazy. You’d scare her away.”