Beginner's Luck (Chance of a Lifetime, #1)

by Kate Clayborn

What is wrong with me? First I ask him to my lab, now my house? I certainly hope my vagina doesn’t have a mind to issue invitations, but honestly the way Ben looks, it’s not entirely unlikely that she’ll speak up in the next five minutes or so.

Henry gives good icebreaker,

When Kit takes a deep breath and snuggles herself a centimeter closer to me, I feel like I’ve solved the world’s problems.

Apparently you give me chocolate cake and Kit Averin and I turn into a Neanderthal. The fact that I’ve noticed that her breasts look spectacular in her tank top is, frankly, a further point in favor of this theory.

Holy shit, though, that tank top. That tank top is my Everest right now.

Who are these men, anyways, to tell me what I should be doing, what my talent is good for, what’s easy? Who are these men to say that I have to live a life where work takes over, where I’m always worried about the next thing? Who are these men who think having vision means making money, making things? And who are these fucking men to tell me what’s easy? What’s easy about becoming a part of a community, about reading the local paper every week, making sure you try something new, even if it’s scary and you have to go by yourself? What’s easy about making best friends, about forming relationships that are going to last, when someone has your back and you have theirs? What’s easy about trying to make a home for yourself, when you’ve never had one before?

Being with Ben is a reminder of the limits of my imagination.

I like him so much that probably at any moment I could tip right over the tightrope I’m walking and fall into a raging, white water river of love.

Now, though, to have Kit—it feels as if I have that someone, someone who gives you that little room to complain in, but doesn’t hold it against you later.

Home was complicated, layered. Home was people you loved but also places you knew well and liked to go to, things you had around you that made you feel safe and comforted. Home was too much for one person to be to anyone. Look at what it had done to Alex, for all those years he had to be a home for me.

When Ben is in front of me, I think about him—he becomes the person I’d let myself be shuffled around for, the person who I’d risk home for. And I can’t do that, even if the thought of never seeing him again makes me feel as though someone’s stuck needles right through my ribs, puncturing my lungs, making it impossible to breathe.

Kit was deliberate about her life, her choices, even when they weren’t perfect or easy to make. She’d been lucky, winning that jackpot, but she didn’t rely on luck. She didn’t let life just happen to her. She wasn’t reckless or one-track minded. So for once, I’m not going to be, either.