“Then why?”
He looks at the keys hanging by my door.
Then at me.
“Because you got your own place now, your own doors.” His voice drops, rough and quiet. “And I want to be the man you choose to open it for.”
Everything in me goes still.
Derby stands on my porch with ditch flowers, coffee filters, pancake mix, dinosaur gummies, and no claim except the one he is asking me to give.
I step back.
Opening the door wider.
“Come in,” I say.
“Tomorrow,” he says with a wink, and he’s gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Derby
Next month, I stand on Amelia’s porch with a dinosaur I meant to give August in Oregon and an air freshener shaped like a pine tree dangling from two fingers.
This is romance, apparently.
Nobody warned me it involved this much retail.
Now I knock.
Not because I have to.
Because I should.
It costs me more than I care to admit, standing outside a door I could open with one hard shoulder, waiting for a woman to decide if I come in. A month ago, waiting on a porch would have felt like weakness. Now it feels like the whole damn point.
The door opens fast.
Not Amelia.
August.
He stands in the doorway wearing dinosaur pajamas even though it’s late afternoon, one sock, and the serious expression of a tiny old man preparing to inspect a suitor for moral damage.
Blue Rex is tucked under one arm.
Princess Chomp is tucked under the other.
The kid looks me up and down.
Slow.
Judgmental.
“What are your intentions?” he asks.
I blink.