When the embrace comes to a natural end, she pulls away, tucking her hair behind her ears. "Are you hungry?"
"I'm starving, and I'm excited about having a home-cooked meal. I'm not too handy in the kitchen, and typically I have something that's cooked in the microwave or I pick it up on the way home."
"To be honest," she starts, giving me her back as she heads toward the kitchen. "I don't cook often for myself. Not nearly as much as I should, but when I'm craving something good, I make it. Let me guess, you go home?"
"Guilty as charged." I hold up my hands. "Nobody cooks like Mom, ya know?"
"Maybe I'll be able to at least hold a candle to her." Molly rolls her eyes good-naturedly.
"I'm sure I'm going to love whatever you make. Like I said, I'm normally a microwave person. You'd be surprised how limited those options are. Especially in this day and age. You can microwave almost anything, but that doesn't mean it's going to be good."
"No, I feel you on that. Sometimes I grab what I like to call a heat 'em up meal from the frozen section at the grocery and think this is going to be so good when I'm on-shift. But then I open it and see how little food it actually is, and then I microwave it and I'm like, I should've just had popcorn."
Rubbing my stomach, I tilt my head. "Sometimes popcorn just hits though. Put a bunch of butter and some garlic salt on it?"
She laughs, and it shows a little crinkle next to her eye. "You eat like a stoner, you know that right?"
"Apparently so do you," I throw back at her. "Anyway, what are we having for dinner tonight? Is there anything I can do to help?"
"I just got everything in the oven. Baked chicken and roasted vegetables. It's my favorite when I'm trying to impress someone, because I can cook it well.We're doing cornbread to go along with it in the cast iron if that's good with you."
My stomach growls, and I dip my knees. "Be careful Molly, I might have to lock you down for sure with this."
Her cheeks turn pink, and my chest warms because I did that to her. "It probably wouldn't be as hard as you think."
There's that string of awareness between us again as I stare at her. Taking a step toward her, I reach out, using my palm to cup her cheek. She closes her eyes and rubs against me like some sort of cat preparing to take a nap. I can't help it, I lean in and brush my lips against hers. She makes a little noise in the back of her throat, and I reach all the way around, flattening my hand on her neck and holding her into place as I thoroughly kiss her.
With us, it's easy for things to get out of hand, and the reason I'm over here right now is to stop that. So the two of us can get to know each other differently than we do now. It takes everything I have to pull away from her, but I do. We stare at one another, and then she smiles, breaking the spell between the two of us.
"Let me make this cornbread."
I take a seat at her dining room table, but turn the chair around so that I'm straddling the back and rest my forearms atop it. Swallowing roughly, I realize there's so much in this room that I've wanted for a long time, yet I've convinced myself I haven't. For years I've been a bachelor, and I told anyone who asked that was my choice. The truth is, I was worried that I would never have it.
"Why are you watching me so hard?" She sounds irritated, but a satisfied smile spreads across her face.
"Because I've never been in this kind of situation before," I admit, scratching the back of my head in a bit of embarrassment.
"What do you mean?"
This is the moment when I decide how much I want to share with her. If I want her to know exactly how much she seems to have gotten under my skin these last few months. I've been scared of a lot in my life, but the scariest thing I can think of right now is not being honest with her. "I don't do relationships."
"Oh you don't?" She raises her eyebrows, facing me with her hands on her hips. "It seems like what we've had going on the last few months has been a relationship, even though both of us said that wasn't what we were looking for."
Tilting my head to the side, I meet her gaze. "I mean sometimes things change. The question is, has it between us?" She makes a noise, but doesn't answer, so I continue. "Although everyone thinks I'm this cocky guy, I really have a lot of self-doubt. It comes from my dyslexia," I admit softly. "For so long, before I was diagnosed, I felt stupid, and I hid a lot of what I felt."
She's mixing something up in a bowl, before pouring it in the cast iron, and sticking it in the oven. "I hate that for you, Dakota. And against my better judgement, I agree with you. This started out as fun, and it was a little secret we had to ourselves. I liked being with you and my brother, and knowing that Levi had not one clue what we were doing behind closed doors. But I've been thinking about it more often."
"And what are you thinking?" My heart pounds as I wait to hear what she's going to say. It's not as if the two of us haven't been friends for most of our lives, but I've been learning over the past few months that I knew her on the surface level. I absolutely did not know the amazing woman underneath, and what I'm terrified of is that she won't want to continue what we've been doing.
She inhales deeply, slowly letting it out. "I really hope that I'm not fucking this up, Kota."
"Trust me," I push out of my tight throat. "I'm thinking the same thing, more than likely."
That seems to give her the push she needs, because she grips the counter and leans forward. "I want to have the relationship with you, and I don't necessarily want to keep it a secret anymore. But at the same time, I'm not ready to tell everyone."
"You're saying you want to tell everyone at some point, though?" I ask, needing to verify what she's actually saying. "Just not right now?"
"Exactly. I just want to make sure this is going to work out." She purses her lips. "As soon as we tell people we're together, they're going to have questions, and this relationship won't be just ours anymore."