“Don’t misunderstand,” he said.
I shut up.
He looked at me for a long second, and when he spoke again his voice was still calm, but there was something tighter under it now, something I felt low in my stomach.
“It’s not that I’m not interested.”
Relief hit me so fast I almost went weak with it.
I hated that he could do that to me with one sentence.
“Then what is it?” I asked, trying not to sound as hopeful as I felt.
His jaw shifted slightly. “It’s complicated.”
I let out a small breath and spread one hand against the counter. “Is it? We’re both adults.”
His eyes narrowed just a fraction. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t simplify it because it gets you the answer you want.”
That shut me up for all of two seconds.
“You’re my dad’s friend, not my dad.”
“No,” he said evenly. “I’m your father’s friend, you’re living in my apartment, I’m twice your age, and I have never had a sub living under my roof. So yes, it’s complicated.”
My heart was pounding so hard by then I could feel it in my throat, but none of what he said sounded like a no. It sounded like a man listing reasons he should say no while very much not saying it.
And I was absolutely not letting that go.
“I’m only here for a couple more weeks,” I said. “If it doesn’t work, I’m gone anyway. The age thing doesn’t bother me. None of that bothers me.”
He didn’t answer.
He just looked at me, slow and assessing in a way that made my entire body feel too warm.
I could practically see him thinking.
I was already scrambling for something else to say, something smarter or more convincing, when he straightened away from the counter.
“Fine,” he said.
I blinked. “Fine?”
“We start tomorrow,” he said, like he was setting a meeting and not changing the entire shape of my summer in one sentence. “If we do this, we do it properly. We talk first. Expectations, limits, what you’re asking for and what you think you want. Then we decide whether a trial dynamic makes sense.”
I just stared at him.
He looked almost annoyingly calm about it, but there was something in his voice now, something low and contained that sounded a little too much like anticipation for me to miss it.
And just like that, I knew I hadn’t imagined it.
He wanted this too.
“Tomorrow,” I repeated, because apparently that was all my brain could handle.