In six months, Gwen Johnston turns thirty, and when she does, she vows she'll have her life together. She'll no longer be jumping from one job to another, from one relationship to the next. A new, more mature, Gwen will have emerged. She's giving he...
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The cake is unexpected and delicious, the kind of surprise I would have loved from anyone, but there's something extra sweet about Blake knowing I'd enjoy it and then secretly planning it. As though he really has been paying attention the last few months, and what I've been telling myself since he ditched me at the motel—that he must have found me annoying, that he never wanted to spend time with me, that I should have just slept with him and called it a day, that everything I'd started to feel for him wasn't the least bit reciprocated—is a lie.
"I should probably get back to my motel," I say as he pays the bill.
"Can I walk you there?"
"It's a long walk. I took an Uber to get here. And we're literally at your hotel. Walking me there would be silly."
"Or the best kind of groveling," he says.
"Pretty sure my feet are going to disagree on that one. You just need to close your rings, don't you?"
He flashes me his watch with the circles complete and then his gaze sweeps over my face. "We can walk up Clifton Hill and mock the gaudiness of it all."
"Based on what I saw from the Uber, it looked pretty fantastic, actually."
"Sounds about right," he says, a hint of a smile tugging on his lips. "Loud music, flashing lights, huge advertisements for experiences to try—all the things you love."
He's teasing me, and I sort of love it. His admission that there's a lot going on beyond the surface with him—things I probably can't even imagine—makes me think he might need the walk as much as I do. If I don't go, I'll have wasted my three nights here in wrong assumptions and hurt feelings. Might as well put all that firmly in the past. "You're right. What's a little walk when we get to experience all that excitement?" I rise from my seat. "Let the groveling commence."
"Hasn't it already started?" Blake asks in disbelief. "The cake?"
"The cake was good," I say. "I'm just hoping you didn't lead with your best effort."
He chuckles and shakes his head. "Why would I ever do that?" When he glances at me, his eyes brim with amusement.
"Exactly. I'm very much a 'save the best for last' type of person."
"Funny," he says, "I would have classified you as a person who seizes the day—more a spender than a saver."
"Since I'm the one making the rules," I say as we walk onto the elevator that'll take us to street level, "I can be both."
"We're still having rules?" When our gazes connect, a shiver runs along my spine, a delicious warning. What I say here matters because the brief time apart has shifted something between us. I like it, and I'm terrified of it all at once.
"Seize the day me thinks we should throw every rule out," I admit. Didn't I tell Izzy that I wish I'd just slept with him? "But 'best for last' me thinks some rules should stay."
