He gave me eyes full of guilt.
Mal came bustling back in with an ice pack wrapped up in a towel, a bottle of water, and a bottle of Advil.
“Thanks.” I swallowed two of those suckers straight down and held the ice pack over my eye. “Reece and Mal, you need to stop fighting. Can I have that for my birthday, please?”
Without delay, Mal stuck out his hand, ready for shaking.
“Yeah, okay.” Reece moved the puppy to one arm and shook Mal’s hand.
“Thank you.”
“Here,” he said, holding my new dog out to me. The big, red bow had flopped down over Killer’s face and he was growling and tugging on it with his teeth. Cutest thing ever. I hadn’t even realized I wanted a dog but despite my eye throbbing like a bitch, I couldn’t stop smiling. Reece placed him in my lap. Immediately he tried to climb me and lick my chin. Out of the three males present, he was definitely my favorite, despite being the jumpiest.
“Chill, little guy.” Mal sat beside me on the love seat, placing a restraining hand on Killer.
“You sure you’re okay?” asked Lauren, reaching in to give Killer a final scratch behind the ears.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
“You want us to go so you can kick Mal’s ass?”
“Please.”
She nodded, grabbed a scowly faced Nate, and dragged him out the door. Because girls got it. Men, not so much.
“Listen, Anne,” said Reece. “I’m sorry about the scene out front. About you getting hit and everything.”
“I know you are, Reece. But right now, I need to yell at Mal. Can we do dinner another time?”
“You’re not going to yell at me?”
“No. I’m going to yell at him, because I’m in love with him.”
Mal stiffened beside me, the hand petting Killer missing a beat.
“Right,” said Reece. “Which means you’re definitely not in love with me, and I need to give up and back off.”
“I’m sorry, Reece.”
“All right.” Reece gave me a sad smile, then leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll remember that next time. Just do me a favor? Don’t come to work for a few days. Stay home and give your eye and my guilt time to heal.”
“You got it.”
“So damn sorry about that.”
“I know. It was an accident, Reece. No hard feelings.”
“Yeah, no hard feelings,” he repeated softly. Then he gave me a halfhearted wave and left, closing the door behind him. And here we were, me, Mal, and Killer. The apartment was eerily silent apart from the snuffling, panting puppy. Mal picked him up and put him carefully on the floor.
“I want to yell at you for leaving me the way you did, for disappearing on me,” I said, moving the ice pack from my face. “But I can’t because the situation with your mom is terrible and I know you’re hurting. And for some stupid reason I still feel guilty about not agreeing to marry you even though you asking me was an insane, ridiculous stunt that had next to nothing to do with me.”
“That’s not true. And keep the ice on your face.”
I covered my war wound back up. “I can’t see you clearly if you sit on that side.”
He sighed and knelt before me, his hands on my knees. “Can you see me now?”
“Yes. Why aren’t you with your mom? That’s where you should be.”
“She wanted me here with you on your birthday. I wanted me here with you on your birthday. Neither of us wanted some other guy taking you out. Just the thought of it drove me nuts.” His face tensed up and his hands smoothed up and down my woolen-tight-covered thighs. “Mom and I talked … about you and about everything. She helped me figure a few things out.”
“Such as?”
“You just told Reece you were in love with me.”
“Yes. But what did your mom help you figure out?”
There was growling going on down by Mal’s shoe. We both ignored it.
“I dunno, what a relationship is, what love is. Lots of things. Seeing her and Dad together these last few days …” He pressed my knees apart, getting closer. “You know, I’m in love with you too. I just, I pushed too hard on the wrong thing, at the wrong time, for the wrong reason. I was a whole lot of wrong, pumpkin.”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Right girl, wrong everything else.”
My good eye teared up. My bad one had never really stopped, but that was something else altogether. “Thank you. But things went to shit and you disappeared on me again. You need to stop doing that. That’s a boundary, Mal. It’s not the sort of thing I can keep taking from you.”