CHAPTER67
TANNER
This was the moment I’d been waiting for. She’d seen everything I’d set up for her now, and all that was left for me to do was to bare my soul to her and hope that she didn’t think it was too soon. As I stared into her dark eyes, the words I’d rehearsed flew out of my head.
Right, so I guess I’m winging it then.I swallowed hard and dug deep into myself before I started talking. “I know you might not have thought so at the time, but I’ve had real feelings for you practically since I met you. Long before you finished this house, I was thinking about what it might be like to have you living here with me, and now I hope that you will.”
Her lips parted, but I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to say no before I could even finish making my case. “Since we’re dating exclusively now, I find it hard to even let you out of my sight, let alone live separately from you. We’ve been spending our nights together anyway, and while I’m happy to just be with you, neither of our apartments are really set up for another person. This house, though? It has plenty of space for us and it already has both of our stamps on it.”
I took a deep breath and stroked her cheekbone as I looked into her wide, obviously shocked eyes. “We can obviously keep our apartments in the city for now. I know the commute might make it difficult some days and we may not always be able to get back here or it may not be convenient if we only get done in the city late and we need to get back there in the morning, but I really want you to stay here with me.”
I smiled. “If it’s too soon, I understand. If you need time to think about it, that’s fine too. It’s just that this way, you have your own home office, you have clothes, and you have all your favorite foods. It will all be waiting for you if you decide you want it.”
Larisa wound her arms around my waist and pulled me closer but didn’t say anything just yet. She looked a little dazed, so I figured I’d better lay it all out for her while she was still stunned silent.
“We don’t even have to make it official that we’re living together. If you want to, we can just spend our nights holed up here whenever we choose to and you’ll have everything you need for work and during the day. It’s up to you, but this is what I want, and I wanted you to know it. I’m serious about us and our future, and I couldn’t think of a better way to let you know that you’re it for me.”
She blinked away the tears in her eyes, tipped her head back, and looked up at me. “How long have you been planning this?”
I shrugged and smiled before I dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “One way or another, I’ve been planning it since the first time we slept together.”
“That long?” she breathed. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“That long,” I said. “I didn’t say anything because, even though I knew whatever was between us was special, we kept breaking up. If you can even call it that. I thought that if I mentioned it then, you’d think I was crazy.”
She giggled softly. “I might’ve thought you were crazy, but that means that most of the time while I was busy with this house…”
I grinned when she trailed off, and I nodded as I kept my eyes firmly fixed on hers. “Just about all the time you were working on this house, I was hoping you’d end up living here with me. That was why I was so taken aback when I realized you’d done it up as a bachelor pad. It just struck me that you hadn’t designed it as a place where you might like to live, and I wondered if it was your way of telling me that you weren’t as serious about our relationship as I was.”
More tears welled in her eyes, and she gave her head a small shake. “It’s funny. While I was designing it, I kept indulging in these fantasies about living here with you. It nearly killed me to think that I never would, and it broke my heart a little bit to do it up as a bachelor pad when I so badly wanted it to be a home.”
My eyebrows drew together. “Are you serious? You thought about living here with me?”
“Only all the time,” she said, a soft smile playing on her lips. “From the first moment I saw this place, I thought it would be incredible to live here.”
“Because it’s such a nice house?” I asked.
She laughed, shaking her head again. “No. It is a nice house, but most of the appeal about living here to me was imagining doing it with you. Don’t go reading too much into this, but I might even have wondered what it would be like to raise kids here, and I picked out which rooms I’d have used as theirs.”
“Don’t go reading too much into it, she says.” I laughed, but I was also curious as hell to find out if she was still thinking about it. “Wait a second. You mean our kids, right? Like, mine and yours?”
“Well,” she hedged. I poked her in the ribs and she giggled. “Of course, I meant our kids, but I didn’t want to say it out loud. We weren’t even together for real then. How would it have sounded if I just came right out and admitted that I’d imagined us having kids together and bringing them up here?”
“You want my honest answer to that question?”
“It was rhetorical, but sure. Why not? What’s your honest answer to that question?”
I twisted a lock of her hair between my fingers and held it there. “I think it sounds like heaven. We don’t have to get started on making said kids right away, but eventually, I’d love to fill this house with them.”
“You would?” The humor faded from her eyes as she looked at me. “You’re being serious about all this, right? You didn’t bring me out here in the middle of the night to show me this when you’re not actually sure this is what you want?”
“It’s what I want,” I said with such absolute certainty that there was no way she wouldn’t have heard it in my voice. “I want you here with me as often as you want to be, if not permanently. I want to wake up here with you and go for walks around the grounds at night when we get old, and I want to raise our kids here together before then. I want the whole nine yards, and I want it with you.”
“Tanner…” She trailed off, one of the tears finally escaping and rolling down her cheek. I swiped it away with my thumb but didn’t interrupt her. “You can’t say stuff like this if you’re just going to change your mind and go back to your apartment with your friends and your girls. My heart couldn’t take it. I believe that you’ve changed and I believe that this is what you want right now, but the things you’re talking about? They’re way down the line. Years from now. A lifetime from now.”
“A lifetime that I want with you,” I reiterated. “I know that it might seem sudden. I also understand why you might be worried, but you don’t have to be. I’m not going to change my mind. I don’t want to go back. I’m finally ready to move forward, but I want to do it with you.”
“I want all those same things with you,” she whispered. “Our relationship is only just beginning, though. It might not be brand new anymore, but what happens if the way I put the cap on the toothpaste starts annoying you or if one of us doesn’t immediately put our dirty laundry in the hamper? We’ve sort of been living together for a few weeks, but actually living together is bound to bring up some new stuff that we’ll both have to get used to and be willing to compromise on.”