Page 146 of What We Break
"Well, I was thinking..." Reid opens the oven to check the cornbread, and the smell fills the kitchen. "We could tackle that overgrown section by the pool. Blake's been meaning to clear it out for months, but he's always too busy with client work."
Of all the things he could have suggested, that's the last thing I expected. "You want to spend your weekend doing yard work?"
"I want to spend my weekend making that space ours." He pauses, oven wide open, brow furrowed. "I mean... you know what I mean."
I do know what he means. And the fact that he said "ours" makes me go all gooey. He's thinking of me being here when we get to lounge around that pool.
"Besides," Reid continues, trying to recover, "you said you wanted to see what we could do with that area. This is our chance."
"True. But I was thinking more along the lines of hiring someone to do the heavy lifting." I totally wasn't. I just wasn't going to try and insert myself where I wasn't invited. That would be one thing guaranteed to put me on Blake's bad side, and I'm not going there.
Reid turns to face me fully, and there's mischief in his eyes. "Where's the fun in that?"
"The fun is in not putting my back out moving rocks around."
"I'll do the rock moving. You can do the creative stuff."
"What creative stuff?"
"I don't know. Design things. Make it look good. You're good at making things look good."
He says it the way he'd say the sky is blue. Just a fact. No big deal. My skin goes warm. "You think I'm good at making things look good?"
"I think you're good at everything." Reid moves closer, until he's standing right in front of me. "But especially at making things feel like home. You've only been in your apartment for a few months, but italready feels way more like home than this place does. You bring a little magic to everything you touch, Baby."
Oh.
That's the best compliment I've ever gotten. My eyes sting and I blink it away fast.
"The chili smells amazing," I say, because if I keep looking at him looking at me like that, I'm going to ugly cry.
"It should be ready in about ten minutes." Reid's hands settle on my knees, thumbs tracing small circles through my jeans. "Plenty of time for you to tell me about your day."
"My day was fine. Standard Saturday shift. Nothing too exciting." I lean forward, closing the gap between us by a few inches. "I kept thinking about this, though. Coming home to you."
"Home," Reid repeats, like he's turning the word over in his mouth to see how it fits.
"Yeah. Weird, right? I've never had that before. Someone to come home to. Not as a grown-up anyway."
His hands slide up to my thighs. "Not weird. Perfect."
The timer goes off for the cornbread and neither of us moves. We're just looking at each other, and I can see it in his face — the same thing I'm feeling, the same slow recognition landing at the same time.
This is it. This is what I didn't know I was missing.
"Cornbread," Reid says finally. He doesn't step away.
"Cornbread," I agree.
He pulls the pan out of the oven, golden and perfect, and I slide down from the counter to help. We move around each other like we've been doing this for years instead of months — reaching past, handing off, stepping aside — all of it easy and unthinking.
We settle at the table, and the chili is exactly right. Rich and spicy and the kind of warm that sinks all the way down after a long shift. But more than the food, it's this. Sitting here with Reid, talking about our days, making plans for tomorrow. So ordinary it almost hurts.
"So about this pool project," I say. "Are we talking serious manual labor, or can I supervise from a lawn chair with a drink?"
"There might be some supervising opportunities," Reid grins. "But I was hoping to put those nursing muscles to work."
"Nursing muscles?"
