“It’s stupid, I know,” she whispered. “I want to fall in love again.”
“Do you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“So what is it that scared you?”
“I didn’t say I was scared.”
“But you were,” he said, not really in the mood for games or semantics. “Freaked outis the same asscared.”
Caroline lifted her head and looked at him, her eyes cool and full of fire at the same time. He didn’t normally challenge her, but Dawson wasn’t going to be railroaded either. He was one-half of this relationship, and he wanted to be a full fifty percent.
“It’s okay if you were scared,” he said. “I’m terrified. I’ve never been in love. Never even thought about marriage. I don’t have a house to live in with a wife. Nothing.” He sighed and picked up another brownie. “It’s a good thing you have this rule, so I can get my ducks in a row. You know, if I need to do that.”
Caroline leaned against him again. “My grandma had this saying about ducks. She said hers were never in a row, that they didn’t even know what rows were.”
Dawson smiled, because that sounded like the opposite of Caroline.
“And she’d say, ‘But it doesn’t matter, Caroline, because if you can’t get your ducks in a row, then maybe you only have one, and he’s always right where he needs to be.’” She laughed lightly for a moment. “Then, she started saying she only had geese, and geese were mean, so she just tried to stay out of their way.”
Dawson chuckled with her. “Geesearemean,” he said.
They both sobered, and Caroline said, “I was scared by the texts. You have valid questions I don’t know the answers to, but it made me realize that this thing between us is leading somewhere.”
“Mm.”
“And it’s either like you said—proposals and marriage—or it’s not. There’s only two ways it ends.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “We could end up friends.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “If you break up with me, you’ll never speak to me again.”
“Who says I’m going to break up with you?” He bent his head to look at her, but she kept staring out toward the darkened lawn.
“Baby, if we break up, I can guarantee it’ll be because of me,” she whispered. “And my insane rules, and my inability to let go of even a little bit of control, because I had so little before, you know?” She sniffled, and oh, Dawson couldn’t have that.
He lifted his arm and drew her into his side, “Hey,you can’t cry over this. It was just a couple of follow-up questions, mostly for myself. For the house thing, and maybe for my obsessive side to start thinking of road trip ideas. That’s all. It’s not a big deal.”
“I can feel myself morphing all over again,” she whispered. “And it’s not very pleasant, Dawson. It’s good. I can feel that it’s good, but it’s not easy for me.”
“Okay,” he said. “What can I do to make it easier? Not ask questions?”
“I don’t know if it’s something you can make easier,” she said. “This is the reason I have the rule. So that I have the time I need to make adjustments, and sometimes those are just within me.”
“Okay,” he said. Silence poured between them now, and he wasn’t sure if they were okay or not. Feeling brave, he asked, “So…road trip destinations?”
“You know what I’ve always wanted to do?”
“Do tell.”
“A Mississippi Riverboat cruise.”
“That sounds like a boat trip, not a road trip.”
“A road trip first, and then a boat trip,” she said. “Can you stand boats?”
“I don’t rightly know,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on one.”