“Ship it!” Steve shouts to a co-worker, stunning them both into smiles.
As all three of them walk toward the front desk to fill out the paperwork, Steve turns back to make small talk. “When’s the big day?”
Matt squints at him, not quite getting what he’s saying. “What?” Then it clicks. “Oh. We’re not getting married, if that’s what you mean.”
Steve flashes Matt an unwavering glance, with a telling smile. “I just assumed . . .” He points at their joined hands.
Matt drops her hand and she flashes her ring finger to Steve. It’s empty. Matt swallows as he steals a glance at Felicia’s face. She’s beaming as she retrieves her wallet from her purse. The entire time she is paying the man, Matt’s stomach does flip flops.
After scheduling delivery, they walk together to his truck and get in. Before starting it up, Matt turns toward Felicia. “Can you believe he thought we were—you know.”
“Crazy, right?”
Matt nods at her slowly then quickly starts his truck and yields into traffic. As he pulls up toward Felicia’s apartment, he can feel how thick the atmosphere has grown. It could have been sliced with a butter knife.
When he puts his truck into park, neither of them moves. Something has to give. They turn to each other at the same time. He’s not sure what’s supposed to happen now. He wants to kiss her, but is that really appropriate? He feels a bout of the dating police coming on. Before, it really was mostly about sex. This past weekend though, something changed.
He doesn’t know how to do the whole relationship thing. He doesn’t even know if she’s looking for anything more than friendship at this point. Ever since he threw the “L” word out there, she’s kind of avoided that topic.
“Thanks again. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”
Matt can’t just sit back and wait. He reaches across the seat and rests his hand on top of hers. When he squeezes, she tightens her grip on her thigh. He won’t let it go. She has to say something out loud.
“Look, I know this is kind of a one-sided relationship,” he tells her. “You don’t have to pretend that there’s more to it than that. I like being around you.”
Felicia presses her eyes shut and huffs emotionally, wearing a frown. Then she glances out the window and stares off into space.
Is she mad that he’s brought it up again? Tough titty!
“If you’re only looking for a friend—well, that sucks—but it’s better than nothing. I need to hear what you want, Felicia. Are you ready to tell me? I’ve been waiting patiently. Now’s the time to be honest with me. I’m done wondering.”
Felicia hesitantly makes eye contact with him and every ounce of his masculinity shreds into tiny pieces when he sees the tears in her eyes. “Everything about us is damaged.” Her voice is barely audible but it resonates with him.
It takes a great deal of effort but Matt pulls out a slanted smile after gathering up the last of his willpower. “I happen to know a thing or two about fixing things.” He tips her chin up and lifts his eyebrows. “It’s kind of what mechanics do.”
Felicia swallows back a cry and whispers her next words. “Can you fix us?”
Matt licks at his lips and his throat is now suddenly parched. “I can certainly try. But we’re in this together. I can’t do it alone.”
Chapter 32: Innocence
Felicia inwardly swoons. Of course Matt can fix us. She feels strong when he is near. He takes a part of her with him every time he leaves her side.
What was I thinking when I asked him that?
“Stop fretting, Felicia. If you want me to fix it, then I’ll fix it. But that leaves one question hanging in the air and that’s completely up to you.” He shifts uncomfortably in his seat and she wonders if it’s because he’s pushed himself too hard with all the activity on his feet—once again her fault.
“Do you want me to fix us?” he asks her.
His question catches her off guard. She already said that she does. What else does he need from her? If it’s for her to attest her undying love for him, then he has another thing coming. That just isn’t going to happen.
Matt watches her the entire time she stays locked up with her thoughts.
“What do you want from me?” she asks him.
“No. This isn’t about me. Not really. What do you want, Felicia?” he says, turning the tables back on her.
“Oh, look at the time.” Felicia can’t believe the words that leave her lips, but Matt has been so kind to her. She wants him to know that she is grateful for his friendship and does enjoy spending time with him, even if it’s just like this. “Would you care to stay for dinner? It’s the least I can do.”
Matt raises his eyebrows at her, leaving her heart pounding in her chest. “A woman who looks the way you do, who cooks and cleans? I must have died and gone to heaven.”
She manages to crack a smile as Matt rounds the front of the truck and gets her door. He helps her down from her seat and they exchange flirty glances on the way to the front door of her place. She’s so busy gawking at Matt that she misses that her roommate’s vehicle is in the parking lot. She unlocks the door and invites Matt in. He doesn’t bring up the unanswered question.
The television is buzzing in the living room when they enter the apartment, and Natalie is dancing around, wearing baggy jogging pants and a pair of earbuds.
Felicia glances back to Matt apologetically. “I guess we have company.”
She’s sure he can read her disappointment simply from the tone of her voice. He doesn’t seem too put off by it though.
“Natalie,” Felicia says, but Natalie continues to shake her hips and belt out the tune that she’s jamming to. “Imma blow this house house downnnnnnn!” she blares, making a terrible racket.
“Natalie!” Felicia shouts.
That gets her attention.
Natalie instantly spins around and crumbles before them. She pulls the earbuds from her ears. “Oh. My. Gosh. When did you get home? I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Obviously,” Felicia says, smirking.
Natalie scowls at her with the embarrassment warming her now reddish cheeks. She picks up the remote control and turns off the TV. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
“Wait,” Matt calls out to her. “Have you eaten dinner?”
Natalie looks to Felicia as if this might be a test. “No,” she answers hesitantly.
“Don’t run off on account of me. Why don’t you two ladies have a seat and pour yourselves a glass of wine and I’ll get dinner going, yes?”
“Um, yeah!” Natalie agrees. “Is that okay?” she asks Felicia, realizing she hasn’t really asked for her opinion before making up her mind.
Felicia seems to give up. “I can’t see why not,” she says, but her exhaustion makes it sound like she has multiple reasons why it’s a bad idea. That’s because she does.
Maybe Felicia wants Matt to herself. Maybe, just maybe, she was going to finally grow the balls to have that talk they’ve been dancing around all afternoon. Maybe not. She really should figure out what she wants before she starts blurting things out she might regret.
Felicia’s known for some time now that Matt is one of the things she doesn’t want to lose, but she doesn’t know how to say that without getting mixed up in a messy relationship with serious emotional issues. Yeah, Matt is mending his independence, but she is destroyed emotionally. She puts up a good front, but ever since that accident, she’s been faced with a sense of impending doom.
Natalie shouts her name. “Felicia!”
Felicia blinks out of the depressing thoughts and smiles when she hears Matt banging around in the kitchen. It softens the hard spot shielding her heart.
“Wine?” Natalie asks her.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Natalie hurries to the kitchen and pours two tall glasses of wine. It takes a little too long for Felicia’s liking.
“Need some help in there?” she shouts.
<
br /> “No. No. I’ve got it,” Matt insists.
It isn’t Matt she’s worried about. Or maybe it is, in a mixed-up sense.
Natalie is smirking at him with her head slanted to the right and two glasses of wine in her hands. “I think she was talking about me, but it’s all good.”
She places one of the glasses out for the chef and stops to tell him something quietly.
“Has anyone ever told you Felicia’s a lucky girl?”
Matt glances at her sideways.
“To have you,” she points out. She nods her head toward the pile of food he’s trying to pull together. He’s making a good effort to please these women.
Matt smiles at her incredulously. “You would be the only one, Nat, but I thank you for the compliment. Maybe you can discuss that with Felicia. I don’t believe I’m had just yet.”
Natalie lifts her chin. “I’ll do that.” She breezes past him, fills a third glass of wine and slips away. She pauses to take one last glance over her shoulder before leaving the room. “And if she doesn’t claim you, I think I’ll take you myself.”
Matt outright laughs.
Natalie smiles back at him and uses her butt to push open the door that separates the kitchen from the living space. She hands Felicia a glass, takes a sip from her own, then lowers it to the glass checkerboard coaster that Felicia has placed out for her. She drops onto the couch next to Felicia.
“Tell me everything,” Natalie urges.
“What are you talking about?”
“Quit it. You’re glowing. I’m on a need-to-know basis. What is going on between you and Matt?”
“I don’t know. We’re friends.”
“Right, and?”
“And, I like him.”
“Well, duh. Look at him. And he cooks? You’d better hold on tight, or I might steal him away.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What? You don’t think he’d go for me?” Natalie takes a long sip from her wine glass. “I think he likes me.”
“I don’t.”
Natalie huffs, like she’s offended. “I think you’re wrong. He’s always been nothing but sweet to me. Those Knight brothers, they’re a monstrously sexy breed. I’d love one of them for myself. You really don’t think he’d try me?”
Felicia takes a sip from her glass and keeps it raised as she speaks. “It’s not that you’re not cute enough, but I think Matt’s already taken.”
“Really? And she’s okay with him making dinner for two single women? Who is this girl? She mustn’t have a jealous bone in her body. Either that or she’s just plain dumb.”
“Nat, shut up. He has a thing for me. Clearly you can see that. And until we see where this is going, you won’t be stealing anyone away.”
Natalie nods her head, proud of her sneaky tactics of getting Felicia to talk. “You like him.” She smirks softly.
Do I really have to reiterate it?
“That’s what I said.”
“Like, like a friend? Or like, like, like like?”
“Really?”
Natalie bursts out laughing. “Oh, girl. I’m so happy for you.”
Felicia shushes her, waving a hand with an outrageous smile on her face.
Matt peeks into the room. “What did I miss?”
Natalie can’t hide the smile from her face, but Felicia looks like a cat with a mouse stuffed in her mouth. “Oh, nothing.”
“It looks like nothing.” Matt flashes them each a drop dead gorgeous smile. “I’ll just be in here, minding my own business then.”
When he disappears, the girls burst into laughter again.
It’s not long before Matt calls them into the kitchen. Once the table is set, they each take a seat and let Matt serve them. He returns to the room with his own plate and takes the chair at the head of the table, so he’s sitting in between Felicia and Natalie.
Dinner conversation is flirty but casual. Natalie is as engaged in the conversation as Felicia, but it’s completely friendly and everyone has a good time. At the end of the night, as Matt dries the last dish, Natalie excuses herself.
“Thanks for dinner, Matty. You’re amazing. I’m jealous of whichever girl you decide to call yours. She’s a lucky lady.” She delivers Felicia a pointed glance.
Felicia retorts with bug eyes before Natalie takes off giggling to her room. Matt smirks when he catches the entire charade. He hangs the wet towel over the handle on the stove as Felicia puts away the dish he’s handed her.
“Really, thank you. For everything. You’ve been really great to me today. I won’t forget it.”
Matt smiles as he slowly starts his way toward the door. “I don’t want to say it again, but it’s no trouble. It’s been my pleasure. I’ve had a good time.”
Felicia follows closely behind him. “Even with the whole mess and everything?”
Matt stops at the door suddenly, leaving her lingering a little too close for casual. First, he brushes her hair from her cheek, and then he snares her gaze. “Even with all of that.”
This moment feels so perfect. She feels like she’s just ended the perfect date. She hates that it has to end. Felicia presses her eyes shut, but Matt tilts her head back up to look at him. Again, he brushes his finger over her cheek, but this time he presses a soft kiss against her lips. It’s completely innocent, but incredibly sweet. It leaves her speechless.
When she finally regains her footing, she reopens her eyes.
“Can I call you?” he asks casually.
She feels like she’s floating on a cloud. She nods first. “Of course.”
He gazes into her eyes, like he’s trying to figure her out. Then he kisses her again. It’s chaste, leaving much to be desired. “Good night.”
Matt turns and pulls open the apartment door, closing it between them. Felicia counts to three and then pounces on the door to peek out the peep hole. She watches Matt swagger out to his truck and keeps watching until he pulls away from the curb.
Felicia sighs. Her heart seems to have leapt onto a magic carpet that is now doing loop-de-loops in her chest. She twirls across the room and lands on the sofa. She lies there rehashing over everything that happened today. It doesn’t take long before she starts thinking about his question. “What do you want, Felicia?”
Now that Matt’s gone, she knows the answer. It feels like he’s scooped a piece of her heart from her chest and just walked off with it. And she let him! What’s she going to do now?
It’s fact: she’s fallen in love with him.
Chapter 33: Call Me
Matt doesn’t know what’s hit him. He never knew leaving a girl could be so hard. He’s never wanted to lift a girl into his arms and carry her to her bed like he wanted to with Felicia tonight. It could have been amazing. He knows how compatible they are in the bedroom department, but it was something else that had him taking his leave and pulling away from her curb, without a backward glance.
Tonight’s been . . . amazing. There’s no other way to put it. When he’d kissed her, something just clicked. If it looks like a relationship and tastes like a relationship, odds are it’s a relationship.
Well, damn.
He feels like he’s waiting on her tonight. He left some unfinished business with her. He’d given her plenty of opportunity to say something. She just isn’t having it.
Matt already knows how it’s going to go down, but it’s not going to happen until Felicia admits the truth to herself. Leaving was the right thing to do. It wasn’t the right time. He’d slammed her over the head with his cooking and cleaning and now it is up to her to do the math. He only hopes it adds up for her in the end.
He considers leaving her alone, turning off his phone and going MIA for a night or two, but he can’t do it. They’d ended the night quite nicely, and he should really leave it that way. He’s made quite the statement with her tonight, but Matt’s never been one to be shy or patient and now is no exception.
As he approaches his front porch, he taps her name into
his phone and selects the phone symbol.
I told her I would call.
His phone instantly dials her number. He takes a seat on the top step and relaxes against the corner post.
“Hello?” Felicia answers, sounding rushed.
“You can pretend we aren’t meant to be, but I know the truth. I know it.”
Felicia’s voice flirts through the phone. “The truth? Matty, what are you doing calling me so soon?”
She’s smiling now, he knows it. He hopes she’ll still be smiling when he’s done with this call. “I want to get this off my chest. The truth. I think it’s time to come out with it. Tonight was just the icing on the cake.”
“Okay. What’s the truth, hmm?”
“I’m broken. My body. My heart. But you can fix that. I love you. And if you love me back half as much, then we could have an amazing life together.”
The call ends and it cuts off his air supply. He waits for his heart to restart before plotting his next move. He takes a few deep breaths to settle the dizziness that overcomes him. He hadn’t anticipated that. At. All. Unbelievable. She hung up on him!
Rather than try to call her back and figure out what the hell happened, he decides to be more personable about it. He knew making a statement like that over the phone was a bonehead move, but he hadn’t planned for it to come out so quickly—it just did.
He hurries back to his truck and wheels it around, until he’s speeding back to Felicia’s apartment. The next time he says those three words aloud, they’ll be eye to eye and Felicia will be forced to confront her feelings and his. If she won’t admit that she loves him too, at least he’ll be able to see the answer with his own two eyes.
Matt’s pounding on her door in a matter of minutes. Felicia answers the door and slips outside. This can’t be a good sign. He smiles at her softly, squeezing her hand and linking their fingers.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
She nods her head, but when she swallows he sees that she’s just as nervous as he is. He pulls her arms around him, bringing her flat against his core, so she has to look up to see into his eyes. They stand there like that until he’s convinced their heartbeats have synced.
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