Chapter 6 #3
He grunts, but it’s a disgusted, low-in-the-throat, phlegmy sound. “Your mom sounds like a piece of work.”
I bow my head. “That night in the lounge, I was there because my ex cheated on me.”
“Yes.” His eyes harden and spark angrily, warming me up because he’s angry on my behalf. “You mentioned that.” It’s not a thing to get gooey over, but that’s the point of what I’m trying to tell him. I was never good at doing what I should be doing. I’ve only ever been painfully average.
“I haven’t told my parents yet, mostly because I don’t want my mom to say she told me so.
Over and over again. Because she did tell me over and over again, but now she’d tell me repeatedly, too, how dumb I was for not listening to her.
Not that she’d call me dumb, but the implication would be there. ”
“You’re not dumb.”
“In this, I was. I should have listened. I seem to have a thing for inappropriate men.”
Case in point…you. Case in point, why I’m not pulling away right now. Mika would be delighted if she could see us. I should be horrified. But I don’t want to freeze to death.
Although, to be honest, I won’t. It’s summer, and the storm is blowing itself out. The rain isn’t pounding down so hard anymore, and the thunder hasn’t thundered again.
Cold or not, this isn’t right. Contrived or not, I can’t do this.
I break away, shrugging my sweater off to wring it out. It might not help, but it gives me something to do with my hands. I make myself busy with it for a good few minutes while I try to sort out the mess in my head and the burning tingles in my ovaries.
Which totally reminds me that my nipples are acting out.
I slap the cold, wet, and gross sweater back on, pulling it across my chest and holding it there.
Rowleigh goes back to giving a good poker face, though his clothes can’t. They’re pressed against his skin in a pseudo-naked sort of outline that makes my mouth go bone dry. I quickly tear my eyes away and focus on the piano behind him.
“Anyway, I don’t have mommy issues. My parents are really very nice. I’m an only child, so they have high expectations. I can’t help that I am not a carbon copy of them, and I know that. I’ve made peace with the shitty feelings it used to give me.”
Most of the time, I’m past it. It just sucks when it crops back up in the present. It’s like dredging up the snowball from my past, and over the years, it keeps rolling into a bigger snowball, and now, to get to the top to hurtle over the other side, it’s like climbing a mountain.
A shit mountain.
“Would it make me a terrible person to say that I’d like to experience living by giving your parents a good dressing down about having unreasonable expectations that make you feel terrible?”
I’m not going to lose it. I’m not. My eyes are not burning, my nose is not tickling, and my throat is not closing up.
Fuck.
I bite my lip to keep from crying. Or laughing. It could be either at this point. I study my waterlogged flats. They’re going to chafe like a mother. Like my mother. The way she…okay, never mind. That’s overkill.
“Thanks for not making this any worse than it is. I promise I’m a better wedding planner than I am at finding things to prove to you that life is worth living.”
“No.” He grasps the railing and leans up against it as the rain slows and dribbles off the roof in cascades harder than it’s driving down. “If I had to be stuck in a storm with anyone, I’m glad it’s with you.”
Neither of us knows what to do with that amount of honesty.
“Why hotels?” I ask. It’s more of a distraction question.
A distraction to my messy brain and ovaries as they are currently thinking about going on a march for their rights to demand access to this sinfully hot, panty-melting, sort of sweet, taco-hating man with a hidden heart of gold.
“They were perfect,” he answers, but his pitch is off. His left eye twitches, and his knuckles turn white on the railing.
I’ve annoyed him with the question.
Wait, nope. Nope, that’s not it at all.
Poof. His legs give out like they’ve been turned into butter by hidden river fairies, and he sags down to the cement floor, his legs crisscrossed at awkward angles.
“Oh my god!” I scramble over and throw myself down in a soggy heap. My hair drips water down my forehead and nose when I lean over Rowleigh and smack my cold palm to his forehead.
He’s not hot. He hasn’t developed pneumonia in six point nine seconds. He could have been feeling off before he got here. He could be tired, stressed, overworked, or underfed, and all those could contribute to exhaustion. Just because he’s crazy rich doesn’t mean he takes care of himself.
Underfed.
Fuck’s sake.
“Did you not eat all day in anticipation of the delicious feast tonight?”
He shakes his head. His hand slides out from behind him, searching for the railing again, even as his eyes roll back, and he mutters something I can’t catch.
“No, no, nope. Just stay sitting. Hey.” I cup his cheek, but that doesn’t get him, so I lightly smack the side of his face.
It sounds and looks worse than it is. His head jars to the side, flopping like a wet noodle, which makes my heart sink in terror.
Beads of water roll down from his soaked hair.
“Don’t try and get up. I need you to answer me.
Is this an I’m extremely low on blood sugar because I haven’t eaten all day and I’m utterly famished thing or is something else extremely wrong? ”
I grasp my purse, only now realizing that the poor suede is soaked, which means it’s likely ruined. At least the inside is still fairly dry, and when I try to flick my phone on, it comes to life. It’s not one of the newer models that boast waterproof superpowers.
“Do I need to call an ambulance?”
His eyes jerk open. They’re a little hazy, but they’re still the beautiful, alluring shade that sucker-punched me right in the va-jay the first time we met.
I mean…stomach.
Chest.
Brain.
“Just hungry,” he mumbles.
“Oh my god, when was the last time you ate? Breakfast?”
“Might have been lunch.”
I pick up his hand without thinking. It’s cold from lying on the concrete but still hot with his warmth. “That’s not too bad then. I’m still sorry though. We should have made a mad dash for a steakhouse, not this place.”
“Yesterday.”
“I’m sorry, what?” He mumbled the word so quietly that I couldn’t hear it over the screaming wind. I lean in, and his beard skates across my cheek. I’m not even going to comment about what that does to me.
“Yesterday.”
“Gah! Lunch yesterday?” I grasp his shoulders but stop short of shaking him.
“Just…got…busy. Meetings until late and problems today that had to be fixed.”
“You’re rich! You literally have so many people who would go out and get you something. All you’d have to do is call. You could employ someone to just tag along behind you and cater to your every whim. You know, an assistant?”
“Sounds perfectly awful.”
“No, you look perfectly awful.” That is strictly not true.
It’s also rude. I’m worried, though, and that has a chokehold on my normal filters.
“Like you’re going to pass out bad. Just…
stay here. There’s an ice cream place that isn’t far.
Although, I can’t say ice cream is great for an empty stomach. Is it?”
“I have a rock-hard stomach.”
Tell me about it.
My eyes track straight down to the ladder of his boxy abs, which is perfectly outlined by his soaked shirt. Those clothes are probably dry clean only. On top of ruining dinner, I’m also responsible for ruining an outfit worth more than my car. Probably.
But still…those abs.
I shut my eyes tight. For the love of the world’s most delicious tacos that we unfortunately didn’t partake in…
“I’ll find a sandwich place. And get some tea to warm us up. You just sit here.”
“If someone comes along, they might assume I’m a vagrant and arrest me for public indecency.”
“You’re still dressed, bucko.”
His eyes slide open. The corner of his lips twitch. “Bucko?”
“Sorry, that’s terrible. It’s an old nickname my dad uses for me when he wants to annoy me, which is pretty much all the time, but it’s nice because he says it with love.
” Well, that could imply I’m also using it as a term of endearment.
“Okay!” I quickly scramble up, tuck my phone back in my purse, and grasp my wet sweater around myself so my hard nipple problem doesn’t become a hard nipple problem that I broadcast to the whole of Providence.
“I’ll be right back with…with something. ”
“Don’t go out. It’s still raining.”
He literally opens his arms. He. Opens. His. Freaking. Arms. Like he wants me to crawl into them and curl up with him. Climb into his lap and rest my head against his shoulder, both of us soaking up each other’s body heat and comfort.
All the cheers to that idea! My ovaries clearly cannot be trusted.
Stay, stay, stay! My vagina chants to the tune of those cheers while raising pompoms.
I rush out of the gazebo into the cold rain that still slants sideways from the wind, though it’s not as punishing or frigid as before. At least I can see where I’m going without Mother Nature’s freaking rage blinding me.
I find a sub shop a few blocks away. The river is a touristy area—okay, so most of Providence is. I haven’t tried it, but it looks clean and smells good.
I hesitate in front of the ordering screens. I have no idea if Rowleigh is more of a meat-and-cheese-only or a fully-loaded, extra-everything man.
But nothing greasy because his belly is probably churning with all sorts of nasty acids. I can’t go even a few hours before my stomach starts eating itself and crawling up my throat. If that were me, I would have had to drag myself along the pavement just to get here.
I wondered if there was anything that would be inherently worse than my car breaking down after getting cheated on by my ex on my birthday. Well, yeah, that would be it.
“Hey! Can I help you?” A perky blond teenager pops up from behind the counter like a spring-loaded toy. She looks like she actually loves her life.
“I…yes, please. Can I get something with meat, cheese, lettuce, and mayo? And a few toppings on the side? Maybe pickles and olives?”
“Sure. Is there anything you don’t like?” She snags a pair of plastic gloves and slips them on.
“I don’t know.”
She doesn’t lose her smile or her patience. “My parents own this place,” she admits. “Everything is good.”
“Okay. I’ll have the everything is good. That sounds excellent.”
She laughs, grabs a huge bun with cheese baked into it, and assembles me a wonder sandwich. Ham, turkey, roast beef, cheddar, lettuce that doesn’t look like it’s going to kill you, and a swipe of mayo all come together to create a perfect-looking beast that practically makes my mouth jet saliva.
As I said, a few hours. It’s now well past that point, and I’m starved.
“I’ll have another one of those, but with cucumbers, pickles, olives, peppers, pineapple, and banana peppers.”
“Sounds great.”
A few of those are questionable toppings, but if she thinks so, she doesn’t show it. She probably makes hundreds of sandwiches a day. She has to get at least a few strange orders.
She whips the second sandwich up just as fast and places them both in a big paper bag with the sides and a few little plastic cups.
“You don’t have tea, do you?” I ask.
“Cold tea?”
“Hot? Mint or…uh…anything?”
“We have mint. Hold on, I’ll check the back.”
I appreciate her extra effort. Even if the place was packed, I think she’d still go and check for me. I peel a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and stuff it into the tips jar by the debit machine before she gets back.
She returns with a massive paper cup. “I double-cupped it and put a sleeve on it so it doesn’t burn you, but it’s still crazy hot. Be careful.”
“Thank you, I will.”
She rings me up quickly. I give her too much money and tell her to keep the change.
She waves me out, looking utterly adorable, her happiness infectious.
If I was sixteen and my parents made me work at the family business, I don’t think I would have been that happy.
Then again…maybe. Maybe she has great parents who don’t—
Ugh, cutting that off. I don’t want to go there.
The bright side of this whole thing is that the rain has turned into a fine drizzle, and the sun is peeking out between the wall of flat grey clouds.
Double bright side? These sandwiches look great, and being so hungry, they’ll probably taste even better.
Maybe even better than tacos. It’s not fall in love with your life so hard that you don’t need to get fake married material, but it’s something, and I’ll take that as a small win.