Page 82 of The Mountain Man's Mail-Order Mafia Princess
Talia folded her arms. “You have work.”
“I have ten minutes.”
“That’s a very specific emotional window.”
“It’s what I have.”
People had begun filling the open grass with folding chairs and blankets. Children carried paper flags, and the smell of fried dough mixed with smoke from the grills.
I stepped in front of her.
“I wanted you to refuse the car.”
Her arms loosened.
“I wanted you at the cabin when I came home. But yesterday you told me I’d managed what you knew, and I was afraid asking you to stay would make me another man deciding for you.”
“You offering me a future wouldn’t have erased my ability to think.”
“I understand that now.”
Talia’s mouth softened, but she didn’t let me escape.
“What do you want, Jonah?”
The red dress stirred around her thighs. Diamonds caught the late-morning sun, and dust marked one brown boot. She didn’t fit the quiet life I’d built.
I wanted her there anyway.
“I want a partner,” I said. “Open your own accounts. Apply to school. Keep seeing your therapist. Fight with your father without turning either of us into the prize. I want to build a life with you.”
Her eyes filled again.
“Stay.”
Talia stared at me.
The radio crackled once more, but I left it clipped to my belt.
“I’m staying,” she said.
“Because you want the life?”
“Because I want you, the life, the difficult parts, and the right to complain about your internet situation until we improve it.”
“I’m not asking you to give up your family or move into my cabin as a woman I’m rescuing.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to graduate school.”
“I may become unbearable when I’m studying.”
“You diagnosed both of us in the first twelve hours.”
“That wasn’t a diagnosis.”
“What was it?”
