“I don’t know what this feels like,” I said.
“Then we can’t just ignore it and go our separate ways,” he said. “It would be wrong to not explore this—whatever you think it is.”
I had no idea what it was. I felt…something…deeply for the man beside me, the man who hadn’t taken his arm from around my waist this entire time. But there were so many differences between us that I didn’t know if we could ever overcome them—or to what end.
“We’re from practically different planets,” I said. “I deliver pizzas, Devon. And you’re America’s boyfriend.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I always hate it when they call me that.”
“The point is that we’re probably too different for anything to work,” I sighed. “You have to know that.”
“I don’t know any such thing.”
“What are we, even, that I’d move in with you?” I tried, attempting to get some kernel of truth about our situation through to him. “Devon, you don’t just tell some girl you’re moving in with her after you hook up.”
“You probably don’t even take some girl to Hawaii a few days after meeting her, without even hooking up first,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
I sighed. Point completely missed.
“June,” he moaned, laughing at me and drawing me down so he could kiss me. “I understand that what we have could be considered the absolute opposite of conventional, but it doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you.”
“But conventional in terms of what?” I asked, squirming away from him. “What are we, Devon?”
“What do you want to be?”
I shrugged at him helplessly. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I want to be. Normal. Happy.”
“Normal’s overrated,” Devon said. “Do I not make you happy?”
“Right now, you make me very confused with a dash of frustrated,” I said. “Flummoxed, even.”
“Tell me you don’t want to be with me,” he said, unwrapping his arm around my waist so he could hold both of my hands at once. “Tell me you want to go back to delivering pizzas in Dallas, living alone in Nana’s house. Tell me you want that for yourself, and I’ll leave you alone about it. I want you to be happy, June. I want that more than I thought it was possible to want things. But I don’t think Dallas is where you’d be happiest, especially not right now.”
That was just the thing. I didn’t want to go back to Dallas—not now or ever. It hurt me to think of the house I’d grown up with standing empty, Nana’s clothes still hanging in her closet. It would be utterly painful to go back there even if I had to—and I did have to. The house couldn’t stand empty. The bills had to be paid and accounts closed. Things really did have to be packed up, because try as I might, I didn’t imagine myself continuing to deliver pizzas and living in Nana’s house.
I just wasn’t sure that I imagined myself living with Devon Ray—and whatever else that might entail.
“We can try it,” I said at last, earning myself a big smooch and a grin from Devon. At least one of us was sure of the whole thing. I only wished I could be, too.
Chapter 3
We left Hawaii the next morning, the private plane Devon had chartered rising higher and higher in the sky until the clouds obscured our view of the islands just below us. We sat side by side on the couch portion of the seating inside of the plane, the same place where he’d propositioned me on the flight over. At that point, I hadn’t had any idea just how drastically life was about to change for me. I’d been attracted to Devon then, sure, but I couldn’t have known how much I would lose and gain simultaneously in Hawaii.
I would lose the woman who had made me into the woman I was today.
And I would gain the companionship and affection of Devon Ray—whatever that was going to end up meaning.
He began to loop his arm around me and stopped, making an irritable sound in the back of his throat.
“What?” I asked, peering at him. “What’s wrong?” Had he remembered that he wanted to be with me when he was actually a super famous movie star who could be with anyone?
“My stupid phone won’t stop buzzing,” he said, fishing around in his pocket until he found the offending device.
“I thought you were supposed to turn that off as soon as the door was shut,” I said. “Are you going to make us crash?”
“Oh, that’s not a thing,” he assured me. “It’s all perfectly safe.”
“Well, don’t you think you ought to take the call, if your phone has been buzzing this whole time?”