by AS Teague
I shook my head. “No, but you know Georgia will. She can’t help herself. If it’ll make your dad uncomfortable, she’s gonna say it. And I’ll be honest, I’m not interested in doing CPR on your parents when they choke on roast chicken.”
Lawson cupped my face with his hand and brushed his thumb over my cheekbone. “Calm down. You’re overreacting.”
I huffed. It was unnerving how well he knew me sometimes. “I’m calm. I’m calmly telling you that I’m never going to be able to look your mother in the eye again. The woman who used to wipe my butt, and I’m defiling her son on a nightly basis. Oh, God,” I wailed and rolled onto my back, dramatically throwing my arm over my eyes.
It was more like a three-time a night basis, but that was neither here nor there.
Actually, it was here and there. And everywhere in between. We’d spent plenty of time cuddling on the couch, but we’d also spent time together on the kitchen table, the bathroom counter, the back deck.
He pulled my arm from my face and commanded, “Look at me.”
I did as he asked.
“My mother wants us together. She’ll probably throw us a party. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past her to ask herself if we’d done the deed yet.”
My cheeks heated. I would rather die than have that conversation with his mother. I loved Mrs. Reed, but she was essentially my second mother. I wouldn’t sit down and talk to either of my moms about my sex life, much less with a child they both considered their son.
No. We were going to have to keep this between us just a little bit longer. Lawson would just have to see my side of things.
“I’ve gotta think of an excuse why I can’t grab lunch today,” I muttered.
“You don’t need to avoid anyone,” Lawson implored.
I disagreed. “I just need a little more time. I’m not ready. You understand, right?”
He gave a quick jerk of his chin. “Sure, take as much time as you need.”
I leaned forward and gave his lips a quick peck. “Thank you for understanding.”
“Sure thing.” He kissed me again, this time hard, but I pulled away.
“I’ve got terrible morning breath,” I told him, covering my mouth with my hand. “Let me brush my teeth.”
Wrapping his hand around my wrist, he tugged my hand away. “I don’t care.” He kissed me again. His tongue slid into my mouth, and despite what I’d always assumed, I didn’t taste anything unpleasant. The kiss was all Lawson and I lost myself in him, the bubble of panic slipping away.
He rolled us, settling on top of me and gliding his hand up my thigh, then resumed his assault on my mouth. It wasn’t long before I was begging for more than just the feel of his fingertips on my skin. I needed to feel him in other places.
Lawson pulled his mouth away from mine and I forced my lids open. “You can take all the time you need. Just make sure you’re finished with your panic attack by six tonight.”
My brows furrowed. “Six?”
He smirked. “Yeah, we’re having dinner at my parents.”
“Lawson!” I shrieked, pushing against his shoulders.
But my protests were silenced by his lips.
And his lips and mouth and various other parts of his body were very persuasive.
I’d have to figure out how to handle dinner later. First, I had to handle my man.
“Hampton, where’s Smith tonight?” Lawson asked, his fingertips tracing lazy circles on my thigh.
It felt good, but I was so uncomfortable, I wished he would stop.
We’d had dinner with his family, sans Smith, but my mom had taken his place and the whole night had been awkward. At least, for me.
No one else seemed to care in the least that Lawson hadn’t let me out of arm’s reach all night long. I’d caught a few glances from Mrs. Reed and my mother had only raised her brows once in my direction. But Georgia had thankfully kept her mouth shut all throughout the meal.
But now that we’d retired to the living room for dessert and coffee, I knew it was only a matter of time before the questions began. And my stomach knotted every time someone in the room opened their mouth to speak.
Hampton lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Not sure.”
My brows raised. “What do you mean you’re not sure? You two have been up each other’s butts since you met.” The moment the comment left my lips I knew I’d made a mistake and that was all it took for him to pounce.
“Well, if we’re going to start talking about our sex lives, I suppose that now’s as good a time as any to ask how things are with you and my brother.” Hampton smirked. I wanted to launch myself across the room and claw his eyeballs out.
But I didn’t have to because Lawson came to my rescue, pulling a knight in shining armor routine that I was going to reward him for later tonight. “Things are none of your business.” He gave my leg a squeeze and his brother a pointed look. “Perhaps if you worried more about your own bed and less about mine, you’d know where your husband was right now.”
Hampton’s jaw ticked as he stared at Lawson, and the way they were glaring at each other made me worry that in a few minutes I’d be setting a broken nose. Or two.
Mrs. Reed noticed the tension and jumped in before anything more was said, announcing that coffee was ready.
Georgia was seated on the other end of the couch and scooted closer to me to whisper in my ear. “Lawson sent out a family text threatening our lives if we brought you two up tonight. Hampton must have a death wish.”
I cut my eyes to Lawson and caught the quick grin he flashed me.
Oh, yeah, he was so getting thanked tonight.
I cleared my throat and decided there was no point in putting off the inevitable. I was being ridiculous anyway. “As you can all see”—I gave Georgia a pointed look—“and probably all know already, Lawson and I are…” I wasn’t sure how to describe us.
He’d declared that I was his, and I’d told him I wanted to be, but his what?
“Piper and I are together,” Lawson finished for me.
I shot him a nervous smile and then nodded at the room. “Right. Together.”
Mrs. Reed threw her arm around my mother’s shoulders and they grinned at each other. The look that passed between them was conspiratorial and I was beginning to wonder if they’d somehow arranged for all of this to happen. As though they had some sort of cosmic pull and had declared that their children were meant to be together.
I shook my head, clearing it of the ridiculous thought just as my mom clapped her hands under her chin and declared, “Thank God. Otherwise that arranged marriage would have been kind of a downer, huh, honey?”
I’d been taking a swallow of my water when she’d managed to shock me enough to cause me to choke, the liquid shooting out of my nose. Sputtering still, I squeaked, “Arranged marriage?”
Mrs. Reed laughed. “She’s kidding.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “I knew that,” I mumbled, my cheeks heating at how dumb I was being.
I looked around the room and asked, “You guys are all okay with this?” I gestured at Lawson’s hand on my leg.
“You two are grown,” my mom spoke up, a rare occurrence, and my head snapped to where she was seated next to Mr. Reed. “You’re free to date whoever you want. I do appreciate the fact Lawson’s a good man, though.” She pinned Lawson with a stare. “You are a good man, right?”
I saw Lawson’s throat bob as he swallowed and then he gave a jerk of his chin. “Yes, ma’am.”
My mom shrugged. “I’m okay with it.” She looked at Mrs. Reed. “You okay with it, Peg?”
Walter Reed spoke up, “Hell, I would have been okay with it ten years ago. Would’ve saved me a lot of listening to Peg worry about how her baby boy was never going to find a wife.”
Mrs. Reed huffed. “Oh, you just hush, Walt.” She turned back to where we sat and grinned. “I didn’t worry nearly as much as he says.”
“So, this isn’t…weird to you?” I asked again.
My mother pushed out of the chair she was seated in and came over to the couch, wedging herself in between Georgia and me. She put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me in close to her side. “You happy?” she murmured.
I nodded.
“Lawson treat you well?” she asked quietly.
I nodded again.
“You treat Lawson well?”
I shook my head.
Mom laughed and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Then it’s not weird at all.”
I pressed my lips to her cheek and she moved back to her chair. When I leaned into Lawson’s side he put his lips to my ear. “Told you.”
I jabbed him with my elbow and grumbled. “You don’t have to always rub in that you’re right and I’m wrong, you know.”
My mom began talking to the Reeds about another family in town and just as quickly as the issue of Lawson and I appeared, it was gone and the evening was back to normal. Only, not nearly as uncomfortable as it had been just minutes earlier.
I hadn’t realized how badly I needed my family’s approval, but now that I had it, I felt like there was nothing that could stop Lawson and me.
Our relationship was new, but it felt right. And for the first time in a long time, I was truly happy.
30
Lawson
I shifted the candlesticks to the right an inch before stepping back and studying the table. I shook my head and moved the plates again, noticing they almost slipped through my hands as I set them back down.
“Get a grip,” I growled at myself, turning away from the table, and wiped my sweaty palms down the thigh of my jeans.
I was acting like a teenager.
I’d picked up Piper’s favorite food and wine, gone by the bakery and gotten a tray of the brownie cookies she always raved about, and had set the table with actual dinnerware instead of our usual paper plates and plastic forks.
I’d loved Piper my entire life.
It was pathetically plain for everyone to see. Everyone, it seemed, except for Piper. I’d spent years working to hide my feelings from her, and apparently I’d done a damn good job. So good, in fact, that she’d been convinced I hated her. The only person I hated was the guy who had run away to Vegas thinking that nothing but a little space and time would make me forget her. Forget my feelings.
All I’d done in Vegas was lie to myself.
But I was done with the pretending that I didn’t come alive the moment Piper’s lips met mine for the first time.
I was over hiding the fact that when she spoke to me, I couldn’t stop myself from getting lost in the sweet melody of her voice.
I refused to act like her every touch, her every smile, her every kiss didn’t turn me inside out.
It was time I manned up and told her the truth.
That she was mine and always had been, because I was so in love with her that my bones had ached for eight years whenever I thought about how close I’d been to confessing my feelings for her that night we’d slow danced on my front lawn.
The truth was, Piper was my everything. Had been since the moment I’d laid eyes on her. And I was finally ready to let her know.
Right on cue, Piper walked through the door. She dropped her keys on the table and grabbed the stack of mail I’d set down when I’d come in. Thumbing through it, she shuffled over to where I was waiting for her in the kitchen.
“Hey, Law,” she murmured, her eyes still trained on the envelopes in her hand.
I dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Hey, Pippie.”
She paused, a quiet “oh” passing through her lips as she dropped the stack of mail on the table. Holding on to one envelope, she ripped it open and pulled the single sheet of paper out.
I stepped back and watched as her eyes scanned the paper, her face expressionless. Her gaze jumped to mine and then back to the paper as her face broke into a wide smile.
Squealing, she threw her arms around my neck and jumped, wrapping her legs around my waist. I had no choice but to catch her, my arms looping around her waist and under her ass.
“I got in!” she shrieked in my ear. “Oh my God, Lawson, I got in.”
She dropped her legs and I set her down. Her eyes were wet, and her face was red. “Holy crap,” she breathed, “I actually got in.”
I smiled, my brow wrinkled. “Got in where?”
She waved the paper at me. “The top residency program in the country for pediatrics.”
“That’s amazing!” I shouted, wrapping my arms around her and crushing her to my chest. I kissed her hard, excited for her.
When I pulled away she was breathless, still exuberant over the good news. “I thought I’d bombed the interview, I was so nervous. Not to mention, apparently I was about to come down with the killer flu. Maybe I wasn’t nervous at all, maybe I was just sick and that was why I’d felt like it hadn’t gone well.”
“You’re brilliant. I’m sure they saw that, no matter how nervous or close to death you were.”
Her smile fell and her face paled. “Crap,” she murmured.
“What is it?”
Her eyes lifted to mine. “What about us?”
My brow furrowed. “What about us?” I asked.
“This hospital is in Philadelphia.”
“Oh.” Her meaning hit me and I was instantly deflated. Philly was over six hundred miles from here. “When do you start?”
She looked back at the now wrinkled paper she was still clutching in her hand. “It says August. So, two weeks.”
Two weeks.
We’d only been together a month and now, in less than two weeks she was going to be across the country.
“Lawson, I have to do this program. It’s been my dream since I started medical school. But…” She looked away, the paper trembling in her hand.
“Of course, you have to do this.”
She nodded and grumbled, “The timing really sucks.”
I couldn’t agree more. I looked at the table I had set up for our romantic evening. “Yeah. How long will you be there?”
Her head fell back and her shoulders sagged. “A year.”
Fuck.
A year was a long time. Especially when you’d just started a relationship.
“Long distance is hard,” she whispered, pressing her lips into a thin line.
Fuck.
She was right. It was hard. I’d done it once right after I’d moved to Vegas. It had lasted a month before the distance had been too much.
I sucked in a deep breath and pushed the disappointment to the back of my mind. Ignoring the ache in my chest, I nodded. “Yeah, the time differences alone make it difficult. And you’re going to be practically living at the hospital.”
She bobbed her head. “I am going to be putting in long hours. Who knows when I’ll have time to do anything other than work and sleep.”
“You don’t need any distractions.”
She frowned. “Right, distractions would be bad.”
Somehow, in the course of ten minutes, I’d gone from being nervous to tell her that I loved her to being crushed because we were breaking up. But here we were, standing by the kitchen table that was set with flowers and wine and I was using all of my restraint to not flip it over in frustration.
Piper dropped the paper on the table and took a step toward me. “I mean, I don’t expect you to sit around and wait on me,” she whispered again, looking up at me through her lashes.
I laughed at the irony of her words. “Piper, I’ve been sitting around waiting on you for fifteen years. What’s one more?”
She clutched my hands in hers. “But that’s not fair to you. It would be selfish of me to ask you to wait.”
I dropped my lips to her ear. “Be selfish.”
She shivered as I nipped her lobe, and I stepped back and watched as she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, warring with herself. She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again, pinning me with her crystal blue stare. “I’ve been working for years to get into this residen
cy program. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. At least, it was. But now, it’s you I want. Is it possible for me to have both?”
She was asking me to wait for her. She was nervous to hear what I was going to say. But she didn’t need to be. I would have waited for ten more years. I would have promised her anything she needed me to in that moment.
I crashed my lips to hers and pulled her hard against me. Her arms wrapped around me immediately, her tongue gliding against mine, the pace punishing. Pouring every bit of feeling I had for her into the kiss, I continued to work her mouth until I was forced to come up for air or pass out.
I dropped my forehead to hers. “You can have anything you want.”
Her eyes lit up. “You work from home. You can work anywhere. Come with me!”
Dammit. There was the one thing she wanted that I couldn’t give her. I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ve got to stay here for a while longer.”
I felt like shit for not being able to tell her everything that was going on with my own job. But that would mean telling her who I worked for. And that was a conversation I wasn’t ready for.
Her face dropped. “Oh. Okay.”
She was disappointed, and even though I didn’t like seeing it, a small part of me was relieved that she was sad I couldn’t go with her. “That doesn’t mean I can’t come see you while you’re there. I have plenty of frequent flyer miles.”
She beamed. “I’m sure I’ll get a few breaks, and I can come back here too. A year isn’t really that long, right?”
I shook my head and pulled her to me, resting my chin on the top of her head. “It’ll fly by.”
She nodded, noticing the table for the first time. “Is that Antai?”
“Yep.”
She squealed, “What’s the occasion?”
“Celebrating your acceptance into the program.”
“You didn’t know I’d been accepted already.”
“Maybe I did.” I let her go and pulled out a chair for her. “Let’s eat before it gets cold.”
She settled into the seat and I poured her wine before taking the seat across from her. Her cell phone rang and she looked at the caller ID. “It’s Hampton.”
