Chapter 10 #2
I had no doubt. Branch was very black and white.
He didn’t believe in the guy-code when it came to this shit.
He had old school values in that way; chivalry and honor above all else.
It had been simultaneously one of the things I’d loved and loathed about him when he was my highschool crush. “Then why?”
“I punched him because he knew.”
Jesus, this was like pulling teeth, but for some reason, my heart was starting to pound harder. “Knew what?”
“Knew that you were meant to be mine. You were always meant to be mine, Tessa May. From the moment I saw you, I knew.”
My feet stilled, but Branch just bundled me tighter, leading me around the dancefloor. “What are you talking about, Branch? You hated me.”
Now it was Branch’s turn to stop dancing. “Hated you? Nugget, no.” He shook his head and continued to move. “I loved you, back when we were kids. Sure, I probably sucked at showing it, because to be honest, I resented the fuck out of it for a long time.”
I was too stunned to reply, but he continued.
“I vividly remember the moment I fell in love with you. You were five and I was six. You were wearing a yellow dress that my Mom had bought you, but it was filthy because we’d been rolling down that little hill behind your house.
You had dried grass in your hair and a grin on your face, and you twirled around and your gold hair spun in the air and I remember standing there with Beau and saying, ‘Imma marry Nugget one day. I call dibs.’” He let out a low chuckle.
“Beau looked fucking crushed, even at six. He’d just sighed and said, ‘I wanted to marry her, but I guess we can all be best friends and that’s kinda the same thing, right?
’. I’d nodded and that was it, Nugget. I was six and I knew you were the girl for me.
That is why I hit Beau. Because he knew it too. ”
Well, what the hell did I do with that? When I stepped onto the dancefloor, this is not the answer I could have ever contemplated. I opened and closed my mouth a dozen times to try and reply, but I was speechless.
Branch chuckled low, the sound honestly making my panties damp, and he loosened his arms. He was giving me the opportunity to escape, even though his forearms are like tight bands of muscle around me. The push and the pull. Always.
“I had no idea…” I whispered, and I wasn’t sure he heard until his arms tightened again.
I felt the puff of his breath against my curls. “Of course not. You’re Nugget. Beautifully oblivious to everything except bulls and proving us all wrong.”
Why did everyone keep saying that?
I frowned up at him. “And you’re Branch, standing on the sidelines, telling me what I was about to do was dangerous, even though you and the guys had done the same thing seconds earlier. Always so damn chauvinistic.”
The rude noise he made had my body tensing, until he stroked his palm down my spine, the way you might soothe a horse.
But I’d be damned if it didn’t have the same effect.
“It was because I was about to watch the girl I loved jump off a cliff into a lagoon with god knows what lurking below. Or climb on an eight hundred pound bull that could crush you. Or climb on the back of Jack Hefferson’s motorcycle when I knew he smoked too much pot and was probably drunk. ”
I let out a little surprised breath. I remembered that night.
Jack had taken me on my first real date.
A date where he asked me as Tessa May and not Nugget.
I wore a dress and did my hair. I felt special, at least until Branch and Beau met me on my porch and forbid me to go.
It was the first time I’d ever had a real screaming fight with Branch.
I’d told him I hated him, and I still remember the flash of hurt on his face.
I remembered Beau’s sad eyes as I tore out of my front yard on the back of Jack’s bike.
I would never tell Branch he was right, that Jack had been high off his face and that I’d had to get Daddy to come and pick me up after the worst date ever. The next day I’d pretended like I was floating on cloud nine, just to rub it in Branch and Beau’s faces.
I wouldn’t admit it now either, because I was stubborn as Branch implied. “Probably not my finest moment.”
Branch snorted, and we rocked back and forth in silence for a while, just listening to the twang of a country guitar song.
I looked toward our table, and both Beau and Dylan were back there, beer bottles tilted to their lips.
Beau’s face looked hopelessly earnest, and I couldn’t understand it.
Did he still want me to choose Branch? Did he want me to choose him?
Right now, I wasn’t convinced I was going to pick anyone, but I was stubborn and I never shied from a challenge.
Finally, it got to be too much for me. “What do you think about this whole group dating thing? I can’t imagine you’re happy to share.”
Branch twirled me, and then pulled me back tighter to his chest. “I think you’d be surprised what I’m willing to share,” he said, the smile on his face no more than a flash of teeth and dimples.
He raised an eyebrow and I blinked as the words slowly filtered into my brain.
Sharing… me? Like on dates? Or did he mean… ?
The breath whooshed from my lungs at the thought of being trapped between the bodies of Beau and Branch. Always Beau and Branch. Even in my brain, even when it came to sex, they were a pair. “Do you mean you and Beau like to have sex with the same woman?” I almost swallowed my tongue.
Branch’s answering grin was pure sex and it went straight to my throbbing core. He leaned down, and he planted a kiss behind my ear. “Once or twice. But it was always meant to be you between us, Tessa May. Always you.”
With that, he let me go and strode off the dancefloor back toward our table while I gaped after him like a fish.
What the fuck was happening right now?