28. Lana
Lana
He was quiet for the first twenty minutes.
That wasn’t unusual. Toren was quiet a lot of the time, I’d noticed.
But this was a different kind of quiet. It wasn’t fatigue or a lack of anything to say keeping him silent.
I could practically hear the gears turning, even doped up like he was.
Whatever they’d given him had loosened something in him, though.
His shoulders weren’t up around his ears the way they usually were when he was trying to put up a wall between us.
His head rested against the seat, and he watched the trees blur past the window with heavy-lidded eyes.
I kept my own eyes on the road and tried not to think about how much I’d missed looking at him over the last two days.
Two days. That was all it had been since I’d dropped him at his cabin and driven away with my heart cracking down the middle.
Two days of throwing myself into vendor calls and venue logistics and pretending my brain wasn’t running a constant background loop of his hands and his mouth and the way he’d talked about his dead wife in the dark.
I was pathetic. I knew I was pathetic.
“He didn’t have a charter.”
I blinked, then looked at him. “What?”
“Walker.” Toren rolled his head against the seat to look at me. “He doesn’t have a charter today. He made it up.”
Oh. So, he’d figured that out. I’d wondered if he would.
“Did he?” I kept my voice neutral and my eyes forward.
“You know he did.”
I lifted one shoulder and looked back at the road. “I don’t know anything. He called, said he was stuck, and asked if I could come get you. I came.”
That part was true, technically. Walker had called.
I’d hesitated, because I wanted to respect Toren’s boundaries, but then Walker huffed and said, “Lana, the man’s an idiot, and he’s going to talk himself into being miserable for the rest of his life if somebody doesn’t lock him up with you for a while.
Help me out here. I’m trying to help you too. ”
I’d caved. Not because Walker asked, but because I knew he was right. I also, selfishly, wanted Toren to want a relationship with me. The sex couldn’t be that good and the rest of it not be worth fighting for.
Toren went quiet again, staring at the passing scenery for several minutes before he spoke again. “I’m not good at this.”
My fingers tightened on the wheel. “At what?” I asked, deliberately playing dumb. If I told him it was okay, he’d probably just clam up and not say more.
“This.” He gestured vaguely with his good hand. “Whatever happened Saturday. Whatever this is. I’m—” He stopped, took a breath, then started again. “I haven’t done this in a long time. On purpose.”
“Done what? Dated?”
“Felt anything.”
The words came out flat and quiet, and they hit me square in the chest.
“After Cara died, I shut it off. All of it. It was easier. You can’t lose what you don’t have.”
My fingers clenched, then unclenched, the steering wheel. I kept my eyes on the road to keep the car between the lines. “Oh?”
“But now there’s you.” He scrubbed his good hand over his face, continuing like I hadn’t spoken. “And I don’t know what to do with that. I look at you and I feel—” He stopped, shaking his head. “I told myself I’d never feel this way again. That I’m not allowed to feel this way.”
“Allowed?” I glanced at him. “What do you mean?”
He stared straight ahead. “Loving her nearly killed me when she died. I’m not sure I could survive that again. And there’s a part of me that feels like—like wanting you is a betrayal of her. Like I’m leaving her behind. Even though I know she’d want me to move on and be happy.”
Whoa.
I let that sit for a moment. Everything in me wanted to argue.
To tell him he wasn’t betraying anyone, and that, like he said, Cara would want him to live.
I would never ask him to forget her—just to make room.
I wanted to tell him I’d been falling for him since the moment he agreed to my cockamamie plan.
But I didn’t.
It wouldn’t matter what I said. I couldn’t argue him out of his grief. He had to come to those realizations on his own. If I pushed too hard, I’d push him away and we’d never get past that one incredible night.
So, I just nodded. “Okay.”
His head turned, a small frown wrinkling his forehead. “Okay?”
“Yes.” I took a hand off the wheel to reach over and squeeze his forearm above his cast. “I’m not going to push you, Toren.
You feel what you feel, and if you’re not ready, you’re not ready.
” I kept my voice calm and light, even as my heart cracked a little, knowing I could be pining away for this man for many years to come.
“I’m not going anywhere. When you figure out what you want, you know where to find me. ”
He was quiet a long moment. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. What did you expect? A fight?”
“Maybe.” One corner of his mouth twitched. “You strike me as the fighting type.”
I chuckled. “Oh, I am. Just not about this.” Not yet. “Some things you can’t win by fighting. You just make a mess.”
He studied me for a moment, those dark eyes still a little hazy, but there was a sharpness behind the haze. He wasn’t as drugged up as he appeared.
What that meant, I didn’t know. Maybe it was a good thing. Perhaps the medication gave him the impetus to start talking, but it wasn’t what kept him talking.
Turning away, he closed his eyes, signaling an end to the conversation.
I let it go and just drove, happy we’d made as much progress as we did. I understood where he was coming from. I did. The man had been gutted by loss and he was scared, and fear like that didn’t answer to reason.
But understanding it didn’t make it hurt less that he wasn’t ready to jump into a relationship with both feet. It just meant I had to sit here and pretend I was okay with the idea that the man I was falling for might never be able to love me back.