Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
LOTTIE
Thane’s footsteps are gaining ground on me, so I quickly wipe my tears and make a last-ditch effort to compose myself in the twenty seconds it takes for him to reach me.
“Charlotte, wait.” He doesn’t even have the decency to be out of breath.
I keep walking until I get to the swing that I placed high in the tree when I first moved here. If I’m swinging, he can’t get too close, but I didn’t account for his speed. He grabs the rope on either side of me before I can sit down.
He hitches at the waist and stares into my watery eyes. His face pales as he looks at me, then he drops the swing and takes a quick step back. His chest heaves as though he’s on the verge of a panic attack. The pain and fear sitting on my chest slide over to make room for his.
“Thane?”
“Did I do this? Did I do something at the diner to make you cry?”
“What?”
His hands fist in his hair, and he turns to face the lake, but I’m so confused I don’t move.
The sun shines down on the water, the reflection so bright it’s painful to look at but so beautiful I can’t turn away. I slowly lower myself to the swing, an old piece of barnwood I repurposed. It’s four feet long and two feet wide—I always envisioned swinging with someone here.
Thane paces six steps, then turns and stalks back. I track his movements over and over again while I swing. I suspect we’re both working through things, so I remain quiet.
Pumping my legs out, I allow the breeze to dry my tears, and when I get high enough, I point my face to the sky. The sun warms my skin that turned icy the second I opened that letter, but my eyes itch, and I find a tickle in my throat. It must be another bad allergy day.
“Charlotte.” He catches my swing when I’m close to the ground, jerking me to a stop, my back to his front. “Did I make you cry?”
The lump in my throat makes it hard to speak. If I open my mouth, the emotions will fly out, so I shake my head instead.
He slowly releases my swing, then walks around to face me as he assesses the wood beneath me. Thane inches closer, forcing me to remove my right hand from the rope, and then he climbs on with me, holding the other side behind my back.
“You want to swing?” I almost laugh. My life has been one absurdity after another since he moved in next door.
Though if I’m being honest, I probably don’t remember a time when my life wasn’t one incident away from incinerating.
“I never really liked to swing as a kid.” His voice is pitched low, with a rough quality that sets off all the caregiving instincts I never knew I possessed—at least not until him and Kara. “I’d twist it up as tightly as I could, and then spin around and around until Ophelia made me stop.”
With his arm securely around my back, I reach across his chest and hold onto the rope beneath his hand, then begin to pump my legs.
We sway cockeyed because he outweighs me and he’s not helping at all. “Thane. You have to pump.” I laugh because if I don’t, I’ll cry.
Using his long legs, he walks us back as far as we can go without me falling off, and then he releases us, and we soar through the air.
“I’m…different, Charlotte. I miss a lot of cues. I won’t remember birthdays or know that you’re upset until it’s too late, but I don’t ever want to be the cause of your tears. So if I did something, anything, today, I need you to tell me.” His words are sincere, but his tone is gruff, as though he’s angry.
I let go of the rope on his side and place my hand on his thigh instead. I don’t understand the comfort I get from him. For all intents and purposes, nothing he’s done or said shows me he wants to offer me comfort, yet somehow, I know. I know that he’s trying.
His thigh tenses for a moment before relaxing under my fingertips. Closing my eyes, I press myself into his side until my head is resting on his chest, then laugh.
“You’re not a cuddler, are you?” I start to pull away, but his left shoulder presses into me, keeping me still.
“No.” Gruff and grumpy with an overflowing heart he doesn’t know how to use.
“But you don’t want me to move either.”
“No. Stay.”
So I do. I press into his side and soak up his clean, masculine scent.
“Why were you crying?” he whispers, dropping his chin to the top of my head.
“It’s nothing, really.”
“Liar.”
“Don’t call me a liar, Thane. You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
He sighs, shifting the hair at the top of my head. “Maybe not yet, but I will. I know that you scrunch up your nose, not unlike Hercules actually, for four different emotions, and I suspect it happens for a lot more, so I’ll have to search for other clues to tell me which one I’m dealing with. I know that you care about my sister and other children like her. I know that you like Rowan even though her laugh sounds like a turkey’s gobble.”
“Thane.” I swat at his chest. “It does not.”
“Little liar,” he whispers again. Hearing him be so…gentle is strange, and my heart beats through my skin as though it’s the bass in a nightclub vibrating the floorboards beneath my feet. “My point is, I know enough, and I’m learning more every day, so I know that you’re lying. Why were you crying?”
I’m sick to my stomach even recalling the words I’m about to say. I don’t know if I trust Thane yet, but I want to, and that’s the only reason I spill my news.
“My father is taking me to court, and someone, probably him, is trying to steal my algorithm and data.” There, that wasn’t so bad. But it’s also not the entire story.
Thane turns to granite beneath me. Each inch of his body stills as though he’s slowly becoming concrete beneath my touch.
“What is he taking you to court for?”
There’s the growly caveman I’ve come to know and lo—whoa. That was a slip I’m glad I didn’t say aloud.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out. I don’t need a knight in shining armor, just someone to listen.”
“It does matter. To me it matters.” He sounds so angry I don’t dare to even peek up at him.
“Why does it matter so much to you?”
“He made you cry,” he roars, and I almost tap out and say “tone,” but I don’t. It’s been a long time since someone’s been angry on my behalf, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to share the uncomfortable emotion with someone.
“He’s always making me cry. It’s nothing new.”
The swing comes to a halt so quickly, I fall forward. I’d be on my hands and knees if Thane hadn’t grabbed me by the hips and hefted me back onto the seat. It happens so fast I can almost convince myself that I imagined it, except that Thane is now standing between my legs and cradling my face.
“It’s unacceptable.” The power behind his words worms into my being as if he’s the medicine my particular brand of sickness has always craved. Has anyone ever cared this much about anything concerning me?
Sure, my brother loves me, and would do anything for me, but it’s different with Thane.
“It’s unavoidable.” I barely get the words out before he presses his frame into my belly and lifts me over his shoulder. His hands are on my bare thighs as my cutoff denim shorts ride precariously high.
“Nothing is unavoidable.” He grunts when my head bobs against his back as he begins walking.
“Put me down. What the hell are you doing?”
His hands squeeze my legs, holding me in place.
“Thane?” Rafe’s voice sounds strange from upside down.
Bracing myself against Thane’s back with both of my hands, I attempt to figure out which direction we’re headed, but now I’m eating my hair, so I drop myself like dead weight and bang against his back with both fists.
“Go back inside, Rafe. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Lottie, are you okay?”
I pause my assault on Thane’s backside and throw a thumbs-up in the air. “Just peachy, Rafe. Just. Fucking. Peachy.”
I hear Kara’s laughter next, and I silently curse myself for cursing, then go back to pounding on Thane’s back.
The crack hits my ears first, and then my ass cheek explodes with a mixture of heat and desire.
“Did—did you seriously smack my ass?”
“I’m mad as hell, Charlotte. Do not push me.”
“Push you? Push. You? Of all the high-handed bullshit—” An idea hits me, and I laugh out loud while untucking his soft white button-down.
“What the…” The hitch in his stride has my grin taking on an evil edge. I finally got one up on him.
Before Thane can finish his sentence, I reach into his pants searching for his underwear.
“Is she—” Rafe doesn’t finish his sentence.
Thane freezes at the foot of my porch just as my hands latch on to bare muscular ass cheeks.
My fingers squeeze both rock-hard globes, and I am powerless to stop them. Who knew appendages could have a mind of their own?
“Attempting to give me a fucking wedgie? Yup. She sure is. Take Kara inside. I’ll be home…”
He smacks my ass again, and I howl like a wolf. Asshole.
“Later,” Thane growls before stomping up my porch steps and letting himself into my home.
“The nerve.” I’m seething and seeing red. “Where’s your underwear?” My hands are glued to his ass. My mind tells me to move them, but they don’t respond except to flex against his muscles as they move.
“I don’t like seams.”
This makes me pause. “You don’t like seams, so you don’t wear underwear? Ever?”
He hefts me off his shoulder, probably about to toss me onto the couch, and I scrabble to hang on, so he tumbles to the cushions with me. We’re a mess of tangled limbs and flaring nostrils, neither ready to back down.
“Never,” he says quietly. I can’t stop staring at the way his lips move. How his tongue lashes out and licks his bottom lip, as though he’s angry at it for daring to be dry. How his eyes dance to a techno beat as he scans my face.
His weight on me feels…right. How can someone who drives me absolutely bonkers one minute be exactly what I need the next?
The cotton of his shirt against my fingers is soft as silk. “Your shirts too?”
He tells me yes with a slow blink that makes his dark lashes stand out against his cheeks. “I have everything custom-made. No rough seams, no scratchy materials, just soft and stretchy. Tell me?—”
Before he can finish his thought, I lift my head from the cushion and slant my lips over his.
We stare at each other, lips touching lips, noses on noses, not moving, but understanding on a deep, magnetic level what the other is experiencing.
Thane grows long and hard against my thigh, and I arch my back into him even as my lashes flutter closed. It’s then that he takes over the kiss. He kisses like he does everything else. Rough, commanding, authoritative. He owns my mouth, and I put up zero resistance as his tongue slides against mine, tasting, exploring, savoring.
“Perfection,” he rumbles against my lips, and my lashes fly open. He’s still staring at me but more intently than ever. No one has ever looked this hard to see to the core of me. Whether he understands what that does to me or not is anyone’s guess, but when his hips flex, just a fraction of an inch, I think I see to the heart of him too.
His forehead falls to mine as we catch our breath. It’s a gentleness I wasn’t expecting from him, and that makes it hit harder than it probably should.
He sits, pulling me with him and positioning us side by side on the sofa. “Tell me why he’s suing you.”
My brain short-circuits. “How can you kiss me like that and a second later ask about my dad?”
“Whatever he did is distracting you, and when I kiss you again, I will be the only distraction.”
“I’m sorry. What?” Did I hit my head against his back harder than I realized? “You don’t know when I’m upset, but you know when I’m distracted?”
He nods. “I know when you’re upset, but not before you get upset, or usually what I did to upset you. As I said, you’re not a very good liar. I know you’re upset the same way I know you’re distracted. It’s in your eyes, sweetheart. It’s always your eyes that give you away.”
“Thane.” I stand quickly. “This is getting out of hand. Moving too fast. We barely even know each other. You. I…I mean, this.” I wave my hand between us. “It’s like we’re in a relationship without all the awkward lead-up that takes months to overcome. We can’t just jump from the pan into the fire like this.”
“A relationship.” He’s nodding as he tests the word. Thane sits as though he’s in a board meeting, with his hands clasped in his lap and a grave expression creating creases in his face that weren’t there before.
“Yes. That’s right,” he says. “This is a relationship. I’m glad we’re on the same page, and thank you for addressing it. I wouldn’t have thought to. It makes sense though.” He stands, clasps his hands behind his back, and stares out my front window. “We’ve shared a meal together. We’ve kissed, had a moment at the lake, and my sister likes you. So, as my girlfriend, I demand you tell me what your father is up to so I can stop it.”
“You demand ?”
That did not just come out of his mouth.
“Yes. A boyfriend’s duty is to protect.”
“Is that what Merriam-Webster says?” My head is on a tilt-a-whirl, and I kind of want to sucker punch this big, pushy jerk even if his misguided heart is in the right place.
“No. Merriam-Webster says frequent?—”
“I don’t need the actual definition, Thane.” My voice pitches higher, but it’s the stomping of my foot that has him turning back around.
His head tilts to the side like the most loyal Labrador retriever.
“Why are you angry?”
“Oh my God. I—I can’t do this with you right now. I’m sorry. I appreciate you checking up on me, but I have some stuff to work out. Just…go home.”
“Why would I go home when you’re angry? That seems counterproductive. We should be discussing this and your father.”
Crossing the room, I open my front door and watch confusion fall over his features. “You’re going home because I’m asking you to.”
He presses his lips into a thin line. “Fine.”
Thane stalks past me but pauses on the threshold, turns around, and places a gentle but stiff kiss to my forehead, then I close the door and slide down it.
He bangs on the door, and I jump. “Your door didn’t lock, Charlotte.”
Right. I disabled his automatic lock. Reaching up, I engage the lock, knowing he’ll never leave if I don’t.
Sitting with my back pressed to the door, I hear him bark out, “Siri, what does a boyfriend do when their girlfriend is angry about…something?”
I chuckle and drop my head to my knees.
He’s trying. It’s more than I can say about any of my previous relationships, but the problem is, I wasn’t even searching for a relationship.
You may not have been looking, but one found you—one that also happens to be your 99.7% match—perfection.
Dread settles into my stomach. A relationship with Thane would be work and will take time and patience I’m not sure I have. Especially with the threat of a lawsuit hanging over my head.
And still, my heart rate increases at the memory of him calling me his girlfriend.
Will this be a situation of the right guy at the wrong time, or can I make room in my messed-up world for a little more chaos?
My phone rings on the coffee table with the song “Bad Blood” by Taylor Swift blasting from the tiny speakers.
My father.
It goes to voicemail, and Taylor immediately starts singing again. The third time, I stand and turn the phone off. I know my work phone will ring next, so I turn that one off too, then I face-plant into the sofa.
How the hell did my life go off the rails so quickly?