His expression called B.S. “Yes, you can.”
She balked. “Not at the same time.”
He laughed and handed her one. “This dog loves the grass.”
Rue knelt to say hello. Shaggy barely glanced at her before closing her eyes to continue her basking. “Clearly,” she said as she sat on the warm grass. “I don’t think she got much at the shelter. It’s not exactly situated in the middle of a grassy meadow.” More of a dirty city block, but that was beside the point. “I’m surprised you asked me here.”
“Why?” Confusion shadowed his face. Rather than stare down at her, he eased onto the ground by her side. His eyes, she noted, were even brighter than the tender new growth on the lawn, and she to fight the urge to crawl on top of him, to feel those long limbs tangled with her own.
Why, indeed. Did he really not get it? “Something about torture,” she said.
His brow lifted. “I thought we established not all torture is bad.”
She took a long drink before she answered. “Trust me when I say it’s still torture.”
He gave her an odd look. Maybe the attraction she felt really was one-sided. He couldn’t be that oblivious. Maybe, their arrangement notwithstanding, he really was just a nice guy without an agenda.
Of course he was. Under her breath, she muttered, “But they don’t call it sweet torture for nothing.”
Ethan shook his head. “There are some days—and believe me when I say before I met you they were few and far between—that I wish I could be more like Sawyer.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s not afraid to go after what he wants.”
Hel-lo. And just like that, the air between them was once again thick and muddled. “And what is it you want that you’re afraid to go after?”
“I want to feel free,” he admitted. “Like I do with you. It’s like it’s okay with us because we’re temporary. It’s like going to a costume party where you can be whoever you want to be for a little while, then when it’s over you slip back into your routine, no one the wiser. That’s us. The rest of the time, with everyone but you, everything I do is painted in a different light because it’s me doing it. And I feel as if it’ll always be that way. I feel like I can’t move on from Amy because then I’m the jerk who left his wife in the ground. But when I don’t move on, I’m the idiot who won’t let go. It’s like when she died, the middle ground died with her. It took away my normal for good.”
For a long time, Rue didn’t say anything. Shaggy rolled and wiggled on the grass, drawing her fair share of attention, but for the most part the world seemed oblivious to their mismatched union . A woman who couldn’t wait to leave the only place she’d ever called home and a man who needed someone stable in his life but would run a mile before he’d ever let that happen. Briefly, she wondered what he’d think of the world she loved—the one not drenched in concrete—and whether he could find his freedom in a place like that. And while she might not be able to change the way the world saw him, there was a chance she could change how he saw the world. “So you lost your groove,” she said. “Anyone would have under those circumstances. Stop worrying about what it isn’t, and let’s get it back. Let’s find your new normal.”
He blinked. “How do you propose we do that?”
“Let’s do something crazy.” Excitement bubbled inside her. Already, the idea of untethering from the city made her insides leap with joy, but it was the prospect of sharing the adventure with Ethan that really had her pulse skating around corners.
Him, probably not so much. Dubious was a gross understatement for whatever expression he had going on. “You want to find normal by doing something crazy?”
“You want to feel free,” she said, like it was the most natural connection in the world. “So blow the restraints.”
“Got any ideas?” His tone was a tad suspicious. Clearly he’d been paying attention, and that made her smile.
As for ideas, hell yeah, she had them. “Pose for a calendar?”