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  “It’s from a book. Of Mice and Men. He always used to spin these stories for me, see, like about how we were going to do all these things and go to all these places. Usually when we were in bed. Once he told me...” I hesitated, not wanting to remember, not wanting to say it out loud, because at the time it had been wonderful, and now it only caused me pain. But Niall had said he wanted to know the things I didn’t like, so he didn’t do them.

  “Tell me.”

  I took a breath. “He told me that if he won the lottery, he was going to build me a castle.”

  “Huh.” Niall didn’t say anything after that.

  “Anyway, in Of Mice and Men, Lenny always asks George to tell him about—”

  “The rabbits,” Niall interrupted. “I get it. Like in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon. ‘I’ll love him and squeeze him and call him George.’”

  “Yes.” I touched the rabbit on my wrist. “So I called him George. It was a thing my friend Alicia and I did. Give the boys we loved nicknames.”

  Niall made a soft noise. “Do I have one?”

  “No. You’re just you.”

  “Huh,” he said again.

  I kissed him, pushing away all thoughts of anyone else. “I think a trip sounds like an amazing idea. Where do you want to go?”

  He looked far away for a moment before he came back to me. “How about I surprise you?”

  I thought on that. I wasn’t a fan of surprises, in general. Not parties, not quizzes. Once in the eighth grade Evan had jumped out of the closet to “surprise” me, and he’d ended up with a broken nose. But I did like being known, and the best way to find out if someone really knew you was to see what they chose for you. So far, Niall had done an excellent job picking out things I’d like.

  “Okay,” I said. “Surprise me.”

  He slept with me that night, in my bed, spooned up behind me with his breath on the back of my neck. When I wriggled against him, he got hard, and we giggled about it, though the giggles turned to sighs when his hand went to my belly to press me back against him.

  I had no trouble falling asleep.

  His murmured voice woke me, I wasn’t sure at what time, only that I’d been dreaming. “What did he do to you that hurt you so bad? That other guy?”

  “I loved him too much,” I said, still half-asleep. “And he didn’t love me enough.”

  33

  Niall asked me to meet him at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. The aquarium was much the same as I remembered it, minus the sea lions that used to sun themselves on the rocks outside.

  “Too many people threw coins and stuff into the enclosure.” Niall leaned on the railing. “They’d eat stuff and get sick and die.”

  I frowned. “That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah, people suck.” He turned away from the empty concrete display and let the railing press against his back, his elbows propped on it. “I thought we’d go tour the submarine next. If you want.”

  “That sounds fun.” I kissed him. We did that for a while. “This is fun, too.”

  He brushed my hair, tossed by the breeze off the water, out of my eyes. It had become one of his favorite gestures, and surprisingly, it hadn’t started working on my nerves. “You make everything fun.”

  “I do?” I blushed a little, pleased.

  “Yeah. I mean, whatever I’m up for, you’re like, ‘yeah. Let’s do this.’” He paused. “I don’t know, I’m surprised.”

  “Why?” Walking, I took his hand and swung it gently between us. He glanced at me with a raised brow. “Oh. That.” With a sigh, I turned to face him and took both his hands in mine. “Niall. I don’t have to be in charge all the time. I like being taken care of, actually. If I didn’t want to do something you’d planned, I’d tell you. But so far, I like it all.”

  “Good.” He grinned. “Let’s do the Ripley’s Museum, too.”

  My answer had seemed to set him at ease, but the conversation stayed with me all day. It was true that everything he’d laid out for us was fun and all stuff I’d have wanted to do anyway, even if I hadn’t known about it before. And I did like that he’d taken care of all the details to make the whole day magic, so that I didn’t really have to think or do anything but enjoy it all.

  “It’s because you picked them all for me,” I said abruptly while we waited for our drinks to come at dinner. He’d picked the restaurant because it had vegetarian options in case I didn’t want to eat shellfish. Which I did not, but hadn’t told him. I’d said I didn’t eat pig, but had never mentioned crustaceans. He’d been doing a little homework, and it squeezed my heart until I thought it was going to pop.

  “Hmm?” He looked up from the basket of bread sticks in the center of the table.

  “The day. The sightseeing, the restaurant.” I drew in a light breath. “It’s not that I like you taking over and choosing for me. I mean, I would actually hate that.”

  Niall broke the bread stick in half and offered one side to me. “I don’t get it.”

  “I had a lover once—hear me out,” I said at the way his expression twisted. “I had a lover who really just liked to boss me around. He’d buy me clothes and tell me to wear them, and it was supposed to be sexy except he’d get the sizes wrong or choose a color I hated, and he’d get really pissed off if I didn’t want to do it. He always picked where we went out to eat.”

  “I picked out where we went to eat today.”

  “Yes, but...everything you planned for today, everything you ever plan for us, ever, you do because you think I’m going to really like it. Not because it’s only what you want or like. You try to pick things because you think I’m going to like them, and that makes me...” I shook my head and leaned forward a little. “It makes me insane, Niall. In a good way. A really good way.”

  He smiled then, slowly. His eyes blazed. His foot nudged mine.

  “Good,” he said, and then the drinks came.

  He took me dancing, too. The Power Plant Live had enough bars and clubs to keep anyone occupied for an evening. We hadn’t been dancing since the night in the bar after William’s Bar Mitzvah, the first time he’d ever pulled me close. He’d made me his that night, not that either one of us had known it at the time. I knew it now, though, and I wanted him to know it, too.

  I had never been the first to say it. Love. No matter how I’d ever felt about anyone, I’d never been the first to admit it, until tonight.

  “I love you,” I said into his ear as we danced. “And I want you. Now.”

  The music was so loud it was easy to pretend he hadn’t heard me, so I didn’t have to be embarrassed when he didn’t say it back. And he didn’t, not with words, and maybe I imagined the look in his eyes right before he kissed me so hard I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter. I felt it, and I said it, and I did not regret it.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Niall said.

  In the hotel elevator, we stood apart from one another, like that would keep anyone from knowing that the second our room door closed behind us, we were going to fall upon each other like wolves on a wounded deer. I could see him in the mirror, just as I could see myself, and there was no hiding the way we strained toward each other without moving an inch. Hell, I’m sure the other people with us could smell it on us. Desire. Yearning.

  He didn’t touch me even when the elevator opened and we walked down the long, long hall as leisurely as if we were strolling along the beach. Like we didn’t want to run. We chatted about dinner and the club, about stupid things I wouldn’t remember twenty minutes later. Our voices rose and fell, and the words came out, but the steady beat, beat, beat of “fuck me, fuck me, fuck me” was all I could really hear.

  He opened the door with his key and let me go through first. I was shaking by the time I got to the bed. My back still to him. At the click of the door, the slide of the lock, I had to close my eyes and concentrate on breathing so I wouldn’t feel faint. The wine from dinner, the cocktails after, I could blame those for the w