“Always,” I murmur, pushing the bowl away from the edge of the counter—Samson is looking at it a little too intently—and transfer the phone to my hand. “So, what’s going on with you and Dad?”
“Oh, the same old, same old,” she replies. “He’s buried in his work now that classes have started up again, and I’m puttering away in my studio. We’re thinking about taking a weekend drive up the coast, though.”
“Well,” I hedge, leaning my hip against the counter. “I was thinking of coming to visit this weekend.”
“That would be fantastic,” my mother exclaims. “Your father will be thrilled, too. How long will you be staying?”
“Just the weekend,” I say. “Then, I think I’m going to come back to Phoenix and hang with Kane for a while.”
My mom is silent for a moment before she asks, “What’s going on?”
Part of me wants to laugh at how astute she is, but the other part holds my silence and lies. She knows I’ve been at Kane’s for a week. I’d told her I wanted a break from traveling, and it was fun hanging out with my bestie. This, she readily accepted. While my parents are free spirits, which apparently got handed down to me through the gene pool, they do worry about me being out on the road so much. They always urge me to take more breaks, and well, they adore Kane.
But they’ve never known me to want to stay in one place for so long, and it’s causing her eyebrows to rise across the phone line.
The real reason I don’t answer her truthfully is because I’m not ready to tell her about Matthew. That’s not something I want to discuss over the phone because both of my parents are going to freak out.
As they should.
They love me, and they’ll be horrified I went through that.
Which is the real reason I want to fly in this weekend to see them. I want to tell them what’s going on, not only what happened with Matthew, but also current news of Kane and me. It’s the sort of situation I could use motherly advice on.
Samson’s head turns toward the front door before I even hear the lock snicking open, but then Kane is walking through. Samson looks back to the bowl of seasoned chicken, then to Kane. His desire to greet the latter wins out, and he scrabbles across the kitchen tile toward him.
“Mom… I gotta go. Kane’s here.”
“Well, let me talk to him,” she says excitedly.
“Um…” I mumble, because the minute he stepped inside his apartment, his eyes found mine and locked. And the way he’s gazing at me now, as if it’s been ten years since he’s seen me rather than just one day, causes my heart to slam against the inside of my breastbone. “Maybe later. I have to help him with something.”
“What’s that?” she asks conversationally. Kane’s head tips to the side in curiosity over my words. He lets his gym bag slide from his shoulder to the floor, ignoring Samson dancing around him in excitement.
Oh, I have to help divest him of his clothing, I think.
Instead, I outright lie to my mom. “He has a load of groceries I need to help carry in. I’ll call in a few days to let you know my flight information, and you can talk to him then.”
At the mention of me flying somewhere, Kane frowns.
“Okay. Mom… love you. Talk later.” I disconnect the phone, then set it down on the counter. Just moments ago, I was thinking of getting Kane naked, but he’s still frowning. Plus, I smell all the spices from the chicken. It makes me feel awkward now that I was making a home-cooked meal for him after a long day of training camp.
“Flying somewhere?” he asks as he starts toward me.
I nod. “Going to go visit my parents for the weekend.” As he gets closer, I have to tip my head back to keep eye contact. “I was going to come back here after… if that’s okay?”
His answer is the crushing of his mouth to mine. Kane takes me in his arms, bending me backward with the force of his kiss. When he lets me up, he orders, “Don’t ever ask if it’s okay if you stay here again. As long as we’re together, this place is yours.”
“Okay,” I breathe out. My head is reeling a bit, not only from the kiss, but also from the permanency he’s giving our relationship. He’s essentially saying his home is my home. I know we had the philosophical discussion about making our friendship a sort of home base, but this is quite the commitment he’s rolling out before me.
Before I can think about it too much, he’s changing subjects on me again. “Are you going to tell your parents about Matthew?”
He knows I haven’t wanted to involve them in this to keep their worry at a minimum, but it’s not a farfetched guess that it’s the reason for my trip home.
At least one.
“I was also going to tell them about me and you,” I admit, giving him a sheepish smile. “They adore you, of course, so they’ll be thrilled.”
“They will,” he replies with a grin, his chest puffing out. “Because I’m awesome. They’ll wonder why it took you years to realize that.”
“I always knew you were awesome,” I point out.
Kane sobers a bit. “They’re going to flip out about Matthew.”
“No more than you have,” I reply dryly, pulling away from him and returning to my task. Thoughts of a quick hop in the sack have been dispelled with all this talk of Matthew and outing our new relationship to my parents. It causes me to feel a bit anxious, so I decide to continue dinner.
“Have you called the detective?” Kane asks, moving to the refrigerator to pull out two bottles of water. He sets one down near the stove as I rummage through his lower cabinets for a sauté pan.
“Nothing new to report,” I mumble, rising with a deep stainless-steel pan. Kane made me promise to call today, so I did, even though I didn’t want to.
I didn’t want to call the detective in North Carolina who’s overseeing the arrest warrant issued for Matthew. He’d been charged with assault and battery with intent to commit serious bodily injury, but he was lost in the wind.
“Are they not searching for him?” Kane asks, belligerence in his tone. I understand it’s not intended for me, but for the situation.
“They’re doing what they can,” I murmur, turning on the flame on one of the burners and setting the pan on it.
“Which is nothing,” he growls. Kane moves over to the right of the stove, pivots, and leans back against it to watch me cook. He eyeballs the bowl of spiced chicken appreciatively, but I can’t wait until he sees the mango-and-red-pepper salad I’m going to whip together to go with it.
“They can’t send every cop out to look for him.” I attempt a soothing tone, but it falls short. I’m as frustrated as he is, but the difference is I’ve given up expecting Matthew to face justice while Kane refuses to accept anything less. “If he gets picked up or stopped, they’ll see he has a warrant out for him.”
I expect Kane to want to quibble about it more. Over the last few days, he’s ranted a time or two about what he’d love to do to Matthew if he ever got his hands on him.
Instead, he completely surprises me when he asks, “Mind if I come home with you this weekend?”