HAPPY | ✔

21.0 NO, NO BUTS

🎶MINE - Beyoncé (ft Drake)🎶

"I just wanna say you're mine (you're mine). Fück what you heard, you're mine (you're mine). All I'm really asking for is you."

"What do you want from me Daniel?"

"I-I," I swallowed.

I had been tattling on about the ins and outs of trading, the stock market and my intense research on prospective global investment opportunities. She had looked interested, with a hand propped under her chin. She had seemed content to sit and listen to me talk on and on about everything and nothing.

Her abrupt interruption hit me like a spinner thrown from the left field. It had caught me off guard and fast forwarded the plan to part three. Needless to say, I wasn't, at all, ready. 

I was struggling to come up with an adequate response. One good enough to bind her to me. One good enough to make her want the same things I did.

But I couldn't come up with a dämn thing.

"What do you think I want from you?" I said instead, too much of a coward to look her in the eyes, choosing instead to stare at my finger tracing the rim of my glass.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

I deserved her silence. It was awfully lazy of me to throw her question back in her face but it was the best I could come up with at the time.

"I think," she began so softly it scared me, "you want more than I can give you."

I sucked in a deep breath.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because," I heard her swallow, "you don't know me. N-not really."

I gazed up at her through my lashes, "What if I were to say, I think I know you enough?"

"I would say you're a fool," she snapped, thunder in her voice, " one roll in the hay and you think you have me all figured out? Be smart Daniel! We have know each other for all of five minutes. Naivety isn't your colour."

"And pessimism isn't yours!"

She leaned away from the table and wrapped her arms beneath her breasts. She cast her eyes to her lap and thinned her lips.

"The truth is, I just don't have the time Daniel. I'm at a point in my life, where I'm just trying to figure things out. Adding you to the equation would just be...messy," she looked at me with soft eyes, "and that, would be the last thing I need."

I could feel the frustration bubbling in my gut.

She didn't have time.

I would have preferred it if she had flat out told me she wasn't interested in a relationship, but to formulate such a bullshït excuse was beneath her. I had sacrificed so much just for this hour. I had put my business on the back burner so I could sit at this tiny table and eat God knows whatever the fück this was, when I'd have preferred to pull up in a drive-through and get a cheeseburger. And between the two of us, she had gall to claim that she didn't have time.

I, of all people, knew that if you wanted something (or in this case, someone) bad enough, you'd always make time.

"I don't care."

"What do you mean you don't care, " her brows furrowed.

"I want you, and that's enough for me."

A tick started up in her jaw. "That's unbelievably selfish."

"I know."

"What about what I want?" She all but hissed at me.

"You want me."

"I never said-"

"Yes, you do."

"The arrogance on you..." she mocked.

I shrugged, uncaring.

"I'm saying no."

"And I'm saying yes."

She stared at me, so angry I could almost see the mini tornado swirling above her head. The gears were turning in that intelligent brain of hers. She was most likely attempting to come up with a striking rebuttal that was sure to leave me paralyzed and / or bleeding from all orifices. Or maybe she was just considering the most creative way to tell me to fück off. 

She did neither of the two and just laughed. Laughed like Kevin Hart had suddenly joined our table and was doing improv for just the two of us. She threw her head back and looked up at the ceiling, muttering to herself, "Un-fücking-believable."

In two seconds she had thrown her napkin on her plate and was on her feet, her bag on her shoulder.

"Goodbye Mr Maranzano. Enjoy the rest of your day."

I watched her strut away from me before common sense kicked me in the äss and had me throwing bills on the table, rushing after her.

She just about made it out the door before I had caught her by the elbow.

"The day you stop running away from me, pigs fly."

She had the audacity to snort.

She looked pointedly at my hand on her arm before gazing up at me with a scowl.

"If there is one thing I know, it's that you want me. Probably not as much a I want you, but enough. Enough to want to give us a try. If for nothing else, then just to say we did."

"Daniel," she sighed. I could see her confliction and it motivated me to keep fighting for us, because that pounding thing in my chest told me that this woman was my chance at a happiness unparalleled to anything I had ever experienced.

"I c-ca-"

I didn't give her the opportunity to finish, for my sake above all else. Instead I swallowed the words with my mouth and coaxed her lips into an agreement. I kissed her until there was no breath left in my body and there was no strength left in her knees. I poured all my fight into the meshing of our lips and prayed that it was enough.

And when I pulled away and saw the longing in her eyes it was was almost enough to have me fist pumping the air in triumph.

We were breathing heavily, our foreheads pressed together. She swallowed twice to get her breathing under control before she attempted to speak, "Danny, I..."

Her use of the term of endearment was an excellent sign, but I was still a bit nervous to hear the rest. So before she could continue, I dived in for another peck, just to seal the deal.

"Danny," she giggled, "stop."

We both knew she didn't want me to.

"Say you'll be mine."

Her smile faded and I watched her swallow for the umpteenth time.

She cast her eyes to my chest and smoothed her palms down from the nape of my neck, to my pectorals.

"I want to," instinct rushed me to stop her there, too afraid of the words that were sure to come next, "but-"

"No. No buts. Just yes." I cupped her cheeks and stroked them gently with the pads of my thumbs.

Her eyes fluttered shut as she leaned into my caress. But only for a moment. All too soon they snapped open, and she was looking at me with determination shining in her eyes. Determination to finally get the words out.

"You don't understand what you are signing up for Daniel, " she was searching my eyes for something. I didn't know what.

"It's not just me," she said, "I have a kid."

•••
*fin of part i*