Wasted Time (The Steel City #1)

62. Penny

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

penny

I’m curled up on the barstool, my laptop shut in front of me. Declan has practice in a few hours, but he’s all mine until then. I took the morning off to have this discussion, and he cleared his morning, too. We’re determined to make some important decisions with both of our undivided attention.

It’s the least we can do for us.

There’s a twelve-pack of cinnamon rolls on the island and a hazelnut latte in my palms. The pastries are from a local place. Apparently, Declan searched high and low over his few years in Pittsburgh for the best cinnamon rolls in the city, just in case I ever came to visit. He claims this little place called Hunny Bunns is unbeatable. I’ve had the pleasure of tasting one already, and he’s right. This is the second-best cinnamon roll I have ever had, only losing out to Seth’s.

I sip my coffee.

I may have overreacted a bit over the last few days, but that period of panic has now passed. With one call to my therapist and a few conversations with Avery, it’s become alarmingly clear that I’m wading through a lot of damage done to my heart.

After bottling up my emotions for years, putting down my shield has left me vulnerable, and there is a lot of fear in vulnerability for me. Hence, all the tears that I typically do not shed, and the chronic overthinking.

But they both said the same thing: vulnerability isn’t a weakness, and my current circumstances are not my old ones.

They’re right. What Declan and I have is not the same thing that Gavin and I had. Every part of it is different. Even the woman who dated Gavin and the woman who is with Declan are not the same person. It’s time to start trusting myself and my instincts.

His career obviously won’t allow him to move. His home and his life are here, in The Steel City. My career is much more flexible. I can relocate, go back and forth if I need to. All signs are pointing to me eventually moving to Pittsburgh, but I’ll test the waters first and make sure it’s the right decision.

I worry about coming on too strong, too fast. About ruining this before it starts. I’m not entirely sure what ‘too much’ is for something so new, but that is also dripping in so much history.

I’ve only done one real relationship and it didn’t end so well.

Declan leans forward on his elbows, across the island from me. His cap is backward on his head, wet strands of dark hair falling to the nape of his neck, dripping on his light blue t-shirt.

Him in a backwards hat isn’t helping me focus.

“I don’t love the idea of not seeing you for weeks, maybe months at a time,” he says, laying it out straight. “I want you here. I want to be with you. The thought of you living in Canada for most of the time makes me feel a bit sick. ”

My heart melts a little. Yeah, me too.

“I don’t love the sound of that either.”

“Moving is a big decision, Pen. You have to want it.”

He says it like a warning. Reminding me that I do have the luxury of time to think about this. He isn’t rushing me. Something broken inside of me starts stitching itself back together. I have to want it. He’s giving me a choice . He’s reminding me of my agency. This plan, my future, I have a say in this.

“I know.”

“I obviously can’t move home. I wish I could.”

“I know,” I say, reaching across the island for his hand. He gives it to me, and I do the squeezing. One, two, three. Always. “When I come for visits, would I always stay with you?”

Or should I rent a place for a couple weeks at a time? Get a hotel? An apartment?

He sweeps his thumb across my knuckles, throat bobbing. “I’d prefer you just moved here, period. Canada really isn’t that great, if you think about it.”

I breathe a laugh. “I want to do what’s best for us. Getting together and then immediately moving in with one another might be a recipe for disaster.”

It might be too fast. ‘Too fast’ set us up in flames the last time we went that route.

He nods slowly. “Or it might be the best thing we’ve ever done.”

I can’t help the smile that pulls at my lips. I love his confidence in us, making up for all of the uncertain fear in my heart that he didn’t put there. “It might be.”

“We can test the waters, can’t we?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, staring at his hand in mine.

“You go home in a few days.” I ignore the way that makes my heart ache. I’ll have to say goodbye to him. Goodbye sounds like the most awful thing in the world right now. “Go home, pack some things, and come back in a week or so. Stay with me for a month or two. In this house.”

A trial run. It’s exactly what I want.

“Yeah?”

“We can figure out if it feels too fast then.” He nods, lifting our hands so he can kiss my knuckles.

“We have to be honest with each other if it is.”

“Of course,” he says, unfurling my palm and flattening it against his cheek. He nuzzles into it, and I wonder for the hundredth time how I got so lucky. How after everything I’ve done, we still wound up here. “But I need you here for the playoffs, Lucky. If I take this all the way, I need you here . I need to be able to come home to you.”

Butterflies erupt in my stomach. The idea of Declan getting everything he wants in life brings a new type of excitement. He will take it to the final. He will win that cup. I believe it with the entirety of my heart, and I wouldn’t be anywhere else the first time he lifts that trophy over his head.

If he wants me here in those weeks leading up to it, I’ll be here.

“I’ll come back in a week.”

His eyes light up, his head lifting from my hand. “Really?”

“We can go seven days, right?”

“I doubt it, but if that means you’re coming back and staying for a while, I’ll deal with it.”

“Okay.”

His smile is so wide that my chest ignites, warming every inch of my skin. He nods, the perfect image of an excited little kid being granted permission, and I’m flooded with certainty. Certainty that I love him. Certainty that we can make this work. Certainty that my heart is finally in the right hands.

Declan lets out a little laugh and rushes around the island. He hooks his hands right under my arms, like he has the habit of doing, and hauls me to his chest.

“Thank god,” he murmurs. “Lucky, I would have thrown a fucking lasso around that plane and hauled your ass right back here if you said otherwise.”

I laugh, sliding my fingers under the lip of his ball cap just to run my fingers through the hair there. My favourite thing to do. He has very touchable hair.

He pulls back to look at me, and my eyes dip to those lips that I love to spend my free time kissing.

Declan crushes his mouth to mine, hard and rough and full of so much love that I feel it all the way in my toes.

I’m afraid of what I don’t know. The future, how this ends, how many more heartbreaks I’ll have to endure in this life. I’ve lost the strength and confidence that I once had, way back when I still had an innocent heart. I’m not the woman I used to be, but I can learn to love the woman I am now. Declan loves her. He sees her.

That fear will dwindle. I’m sure of it. With each brush of his lips and brush of his hands. I will learn to not be afraid of the unknown.

He’s reaching for his shirt that I threw on my body this morning. In a second, it’s off my frame, tossed somewhere else in the room. I’m bare underneath, fully nude, and his eyes heat, as if he had expected something different. As if he wasn’t there when I tossed it on this morning.

He pulls me back to his mouth, his fingers digging into the slope of my waist.

I cling to him, my bare chest pressed against the fabric of his shirt. One of his hands glides up my spine. His touch is feather-light, slow, and controlled. I shiver at the feeling, breaking the kiss just as his hand comes to rest on my lower back .

He presses his forehead against mine. “I’m supposed to live through seven whole days without this?”

I interlock my fingers behind his neck, angling my head as his eyes dip lower and lower, and lower still.

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

His eyes snap back up to mine. “Promise that you’re going to come home to me.”

There’s a sting of pain at the doubt I see in his face, that I hear in his voice. I caused that.

“I promise.”

He nods, his throat bobbing. I want to smooth those lines that appear between his brows, hold him and admit how badly I’ve wanted this, how he’s been ‘home’ for me for a long time.

“I don’t think I’ll last seven days,” he says.

“Me neither.”

Declan angles his head. “You stopped talking to me for over a year before.”

I lean up to press my mouth to his. “And what a terrible year it was.”