Sadly, he let his lip go and spoke, breaking the spell.

“How about we break yours down first?” he suggested.

I didn’t know whether to be happy we weren’t going to push any weird small talk and instead were going to get it out of the way or to be freaked that what he said intimated that he had items for the agenda.

I didn’t comment on this. I just nodded.

He swallowed the load of Indian food he’d put in his mouth waiting for me to nod, reached out and nabbed his beer, took a swig, then set it aside and turned back to me.

Then he started.

“Valenzuela and Bounty, Rosalie, they are not your problem.”

He said this unyielding, like he could just get away with saying that and I’d let that go when we were talking about really bad bad guys and a beef with a rival motorcycle club, not to mention vigilante activities.

“Snap—”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “No. Your involvement in that stopped in that warehouse. It’s over for you now.”

“But it’s not over for you,” I said quietly. “And we’re right now finding our way to the us I think it’s clear both of us want, so if you’re gonna be a part of my life, what’s part of your life will be part of mine.”

“Is it clear?” he asked.

“Sorry?” I asked back.

“The thing that you said I really wanna get into, Rosie, is that you’d started falling for me. Considering what put us here, I felt it was priority to state you got nothing to worry about with Valenzuela and Bounty. But now we’re there.”

“I’d rather clear things up about Valenzuela and Bounty,” I replied.

“Baby, are you falling for me?”

It was a whisper, soft and sweet with snowy, blue eyes intent on me, like the next words I spoke were the words he’d been waiting for since he’d started breathing.

“You’re…you’re…” God! “You’re Snap.”

His tone was the same when he confirmed, “I am but that doesn’t answer the question, Rosie.”

My tone matched his when I returned, “To me it does.”

His snowy blue eyes started flaming as he muttered, “Fuck, now I’m not hungry and instead I wanna jump you through the butter chicken.”

From what I’d eaten, I could tell the food he got was crazy-good and I’d been hungry.

But now I wasn’t. I also wasn’t feeling nervous or shy. I just wanted him to jump me.

Even so, we needed to stay on target.

“I don’t want you to think I’ll find someone else when I’m with you,” I whispered.

“Rosie, do you think I’d be sittin’ right here…hell, you’d be sittin’ right here if I thought that?”

That made sense.

But still.

“I need you to know. I need to say the words. I need you to understand I know that was there and how it happened and it’s still all about you. It was messy and crazy and scary but you came through all that, solid and strong and protective, and it became about that. But it feels wrong because it was all the first parts.”

“It’s not wrong, Rosalie.”

“I want to make sure you believe that.”

“I can assure you, baby, that I believe that.”

I wished that worked.

It just didn’t.

Not for me.

Because I knew how it was supposed to be.

“My mom…my dad…” I shook my head hard, trying to shake some sense into the words I had to say so he’d understand how important they were, “there was no one else for her and no one else for him. It wasn’t about being a couple and forsaking all others. When they got together, the world just vanished. They functioned in it and I came along and they made me part of their world, but it was just us. There was family and there were friends, but in the end, it was just us. They never shared, either of them, but at least for Mom, outside going to the prom with somebody, I don’t think there was anyone before him for her. I know my grandparents were freaked he was so much older than her but then Dad was Dad and he won them around.”

“You cannot live your parents’ life, honey,” he said gently.

I nodded. “No, I get that. I totally do. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I’d want the man I decided on to know there was no one for me but him. That I want our lives and our children to be our world. I want the end result of what they had but it’s not even that. I’d want my man to know down to his bones that was what he was getting from me.”

“And you think, we go to that place, because of how this began, I’ll question that,” he deduced.

“I think you’re brothers with Shy, so that history is just plain in your face, and then I was with Beck when things started, and I think life happens, arguments happen, and it would kill me if anything ever shook your understanding it’s only you.”

“Baby, when we make love later, you’re gonna find out I’m not comin’ to you a virgin.”

I put my plate to my lap, leaned his way and said, “It’s not the same.”

“I been along for this ride with you, Rosie. Do you think I missed that?”

“No, it’s just—”