Chapter 20 #2
What hand? There was something wrong with my hand?
“Your burned hand,” he said, raising both his eyebrows, a slight smile playing at his lips.
Jesus Christ. I’d lost it. I swallowed. “Same old. It hurts. I’m taking some pain medication when it gets really bad, but not a lot.
I have to rubber band a bag around my hand to shower.
I cut myself shaving. I haven’t shampooed my hair in five days.
It takes me longer to do everything with this thing, but I’ll live.
” Poor and in pain, but it could be worse. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Nope.”
“Really. I can help. I have one good hand, and I’m bored out of my mind.
It’s only been a few days, but I don’t know how I’m going to make it being stuck at home.
” That was putting it lightly. I’d gone to help my mom at the store she worked at, but only made it three hours before her comments about my intelligence—because who goes into a burning house? —got to be too much and I left.
Those hazel eyes were on me for a couple of seconds before his mouth twitched. His hands went to his hips and I told myself, Don’t fucking look, Diana. Don’t look down.
The question was out of my mouth before I could stop myself. “Are you really patriotic or do you just like eagles?”
His eyebrows went up and with a straight face, he glanced down at his chest before focusing back on me. “My dad had this tattoo on his arm.” Then, like what I’d asked was no big deal, he asked, “You need something to do?”
I nodded, telling myself to let the tattoo go.
“You sure? You’ll only use one hand?”
Why was the first thought that popped into my head a dirty one?
And why did my face turn red as I thought that over?
“Cross my heart.”
Dallas tipped his head to the side. “You didn’t start on Louie’s quarterpipe while I was gone, did you?”
There it was. Another reminder he’d gone somewhere. Hmm. “Nope.”
“Then you can help me build it.”
The “shit” came out of my mouth before I could stop it and he smiled.
“Or I can do it alone.” He paused for all of a second before saying, “If you tell me you can do it by yourself—”
I rolled my eyes. “No,” I mumbled. “If you insist on helping, we can do it together, and by together, I mean you’re going to be stuck doing most of it because I only have one hand, but I’ll try my best.” I shrugged.
“It would be nice to surprise him tomorrow. He’s spending the night with the Larsens today. You think we can get it done?”
The small smile that came over Dallas’s mouth was like a roman candle straight to my heart. “We can try our best,” he offered with all that patience and easygoing nature that cried out to me.
What I wouldn’t do for the best of Dallas Walker. But all I said was, “Okay. I’m ready when you are.”
“Give me fifteen so I can finish up here and get this thing across the street,” he compromised.
I nodded. “I’ll meet you in the backyard.”
It didn’t take him the full fifteen minutes to make his way over.
I’d grabbed my gardening gloves from the shed while I waited and slipped one on, and after thinking about it for a moment, got my toolbox out again too.
I still didn’t understand what had come over him that other night, but he hadn’t brought it up, and I wasn’t going to either.
The only thing I wanted to talk about was where he had gone to, but I made a promise to myself I wasn’t going to ask. I wasn’t.
Dallas had come prepared too from the looks of it as he opened the gate and closed it behind him, giving Mac—who was outside with me—a rub on the head.
Unfortunately, or I guessed fortunately, he’d put on a T-shirt.
It was one of his threadbare shirts that he usually worked in from the stains all over random places on it.
“I know they’re old.”
I raised my eyes to his and frowned. “What?”
“My clothes,” he said, giving me his back as he went straight toward one of the crates, his hammer in his hand. He went ahead and pried the lid off with the claw side of the hammer. “I hate shopping.”
Straightening up, I kept frowning at him, suddenly embarrassed that he’d caught me looking at what he was wearing. “They’re fine,” I told him slowly. “The whole purpose is not to be naked, isn’t it?”
He “hmmed” as he moved to the corner of the box furthest away from me.
“I don’t buy new clothes that often either,” I tried to offer him. “If I didn’t have to dress up for work, I wouldn’t, and I’ve had all those for years now. The boys grow so fast and tear up their stuff so easily, they’re the only ones who get new things regularly in our house.”
“Nana’s always giving me grief over them,” he said, quietly or maybe he was just distracted, I wasn’t sure. “She says the ladies like a well-put-together man.”
That made me laugh. “Maybe for an idiot. I went on a few dates with this one guy a few years ago who dressed better than I did, and you know what? He lived with his parents and they still paid his car insurance. I know I’m not one to talk because it took me forever to get my shit together—and even now, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing half the time—but everyone should have some priorities in life.
Trust me when I tell you, clothing isn’t everything. ”
Dallas briefly glanced up at me as he moved to another corner with his hammer.
“One of the only things I remember about my dad is that he never matched unless he was in his uniform. Ever. My mom laughed at how much effort he didn’t put into his clothes.
” I could see the corner of his mouth tip into a smile at the memory, and just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared.
“When I tried living with my ex for those two months after I got back on land, she wouldn’t let me go anywhere with her unless I changed. She said I made her feel poor.”
Now I wasn’t just going to have to kill his future wife, I was going to have to kill his ex, too. God. My question came out more gritted than I’d intended. “And did you? Change?”
“For a few days.”
“You shouldn’t have had to try in the first place,” I told him, and he glanced up, a small smile on that bristly face.
“I should have if it really mattered to her that much, but I didn’t care enough.
I’ve never been with anyone longer than a year, you know.
Long-distance relationships don’t usually work, and I never tried one until her, but every couple I know who did it and survived, always compromised.
You have to care about the other person’s feelings enough to not always be right or have your way.
I don’t regret not trying to make it work, but if I’d loved her, I should have. ”
Was it rude for me to think I was glad he hadn’t?
Before I could think about that too long, he threw out, “Now I know for next time.”
I was not going to sabotage any future relationships of his. I wasn’t.
Then what the hell was I going to do? I wondered. Move somewhere else? Find a boyfriend to maybe be half the man he was and hopefully he’d keep my mind off the one who lived across the street from me who I had all these… feelings for?
What the hell had I done? Why had I done this to myself? I knew better. I knew better than to like Dallas . And yet, I couldn’t help but ask, “Have you… had a lot of girlfriends?”
This man glanced over at me with a funny expression on his face before facing the crate again. “I’ve never been one of those guys with a new girl every week or every month.”
That still wasn’t an answer, and at the risk of sounding like a crazy person, all I did was mumble, “Hmm.” Either I was dying inside or this was what a serial killer felt like when he or she needed to get another fix. It could have been either or.
That was enough for him to look at me again with that weird facial expression.
“I’m forty-one, Diana. I’ve had girlfriends.
Except for my ex, I never lived with any of them.
Never proposed to any of them. The only girl I’ve loved was my high school girlfriend, and I haven’t heard anything about her since I broke up with her to join the navy.
I’ve never looked any of them up online, talked to them on the phone, and I can’t remember most of their names or what they look like. I was at sea a lot.”
Of course I knew he’d had other relationships in the past, but him acknowledging them still made my stomach roll in jealousy and maybe a little hatred too.
Bitches. Not trusting myself to not call all of his exes sluts, my brilliant fucking response was another “Hmm.” And then, as if I was trying to make myself feel better, I told him, “I’ve only had four real boyfriends in my entire life, my ex not included.
If I ever saw any of them again, they would probably run the other way. ”
How did Dallas respond? With a “Hmm” that had me eyeing him.
Was he using too much force to pry the nail out or was I imagining it?
“Thanks for going to see Nana,” he commented suddenly, changing the subject and making me keep looking at him. He walked toward the corner right by me before glancing over in my direction, his eyes going to my pink, puppy toolbox for a brief second. He glanced away from it almost immediately.
I groped for the change in subject. “Yeah, of course. She told me she’s going to be staying with you until her house gets fixed.”
“Yeah.” He positioned his body directly to my side, his butt inches from me. I looked away. “She wants her own place back, but she’s gonna be stuck with me for a while, no matter what she says.”
“She doesn’t want to stay with you?”
“She doesn’t want to stay with anyone. She keeps telling me that she hasn’t lived under somebody else’s roof in over seventy years and she’s not gonna do it for any longer than she needs to.
She offered to go stay with her sister who lives in a retirement community to ‘get out of my hair,’ but I’m not gonna let her live with anybody but me until her house gets fixed.
She’s my grandma. I’m not about to pawn her off. ”