Page 22 of The Neighborly Thing To Do
“The label is adorable.” He looks up at me and grins. “Between your movie choices and your cartoon blackberry, who knew my wife has such a whimsical side?”
It’s like my brain breaks for a minute, and I don’t know if it’s being accused of beingwhimsicalor being called his wife without an audience that causes it. “Cassidy?”
“Eat your breakfast,” I manage to say.
“Yes, ma’am.” He splits a muffin in half and spreads a liberal amount of jam on it.
I put my sandwich aside and settle down at the table to prepare my own muffin. “Thank you for breakfast,” he says.
“It was my turn.”
“Then I’ll get dinner.”
“I’ll be home in plenty of time to cook tonight.”
“So will I,” he says, smirking slightly.
I roll my eyes at his stubborn insistence. “Alright, impress me then.”
“Gladly.”
He finishes his muffin in a few bites, and I push the plate closer to him. I can’t imagine how much food he needs a day to support his massive frame. And the flying he does surely has to burn a tremendous amount of calories.
He grabs another one, covers it with jam, and closes his eyes as he takes a bite. “Please take this as permanent permission to pick all the blackberries you want from my property,” he says, and I smile at the compliment.
“Thank you.” It’s one of my many hobbies, trying to find something that brings joy into my life. It had at least stuck. So had painting. I enjoy knitting, too. Soap making had been a massive failure, and jewelry making had involved me stabbing my finger with wires too many times.
“After you fell asleep last night, I was thinking,” Finn continues.
“Thinking what?” My chest tightens. I try not to rush into any conclusions, but there are a lot of things he could havethought about that wouldn’t go so well for me. He could have realized this is a colossal waste of his time, or that he doesn’t like lying to his neighbors. I wouldn’t blame him for either.
“How to sell this to people. Make the town side with you at the town meeting.”
That’s not what I expected, although I should have. Obviously, once Finn commits to something, he goes all-out. He’s not going to quit until no one can throw me out of town—or until we lose. “Alright. Tell me what you got.”
“Well, we can start by me bringing you to work and picking you up,” he says. “That sounds like the type of thing a newly married couple would do, right?”
“Will it interrupt your day?” I know Finn technically sets his own hours, but he works hard for his art, and if I understand what he was telling me about his waiting list last night, people probably pay serious money for some of his stuff. He can’t go getting distracted all over town because of me.
He waves my concern away. “Don’t worry about it,” he dismisses, even though I am indeed going to worry about it. “The other part of what I was thinking is we should go on dates. And we should touch more.”
That does make some amount of sense. He has been touching me a lot, but mostly in ways people could construe as platonic. If we really want to sell this, we’ll have to step it up. “I guess some more…intimatetouches would convince people,“ I agree.
He chuckles. “Yeah, you started that last night just fine. If we keep it up, they’ll never doubt you.”
I blink. “What do you mean?” I hadn’t touched him any more than he touched me, and it’d all been appropriate.
“My, uh, horns. When you stroked them.”
“When I cleaned the dust off them?” I ask. “What’s that have to do with anything?”
He’s not looking at me now. “Okay, so—my horns and my wings, they’re sensitive.”
“Does it hurt?” I ask, guilt bubbling in my gut. He should have said something sooner.
“Hurt isn’t the word I’d use to describe it, Cassidy.”
Oh.Oh.
