Chapter 41
PACE – LATE NOVEMBER
Indulgence
This isn’t a date but it’s as close as I’ll get with Annie and I’m high on it. That we’re hanging out like this, in whatever capacity we’re each showing up in.
Being in her company is easy, natural. I want to know everything she’s got to tell me.
She knows and loves football, too, which means we can really talk about everything that’s going on with Lamar, even if we silently agree not to discuss Auston potentially replacing our current quarterback.
I tell her my plan to put more time into helping Lamar find his voice with the guys.
“You can’t help yourself, can you?” she asks.
She leans her head, the afternoon sun catching one side of her face, lighting her up, making those irises dazzle like diamonds in a Tiffany & Co. window.
“You’re always trying to make everything better for everyone.”
The way she thinks so highly of me makes me nervous, uncommonly so.
“What can I say, I’m a people pleaser. I have daddy issues, remember.”
She scoffs. “Well, if daddy issues make Nelson turn out half as well as you, I won’t be sorry.”
Heat rises to my cheeks as soon as the words leave her mouth and I’m immensely grateful when two wait staff appear at the side of our table – one carrying four plates, the other carrying a gueridon and two more plates.
“This is disgusting,” she says after thanking the wait staff.
“Annie, very occasionally, I ask myself why for half a year I risk breaking my bones and getting chronic injuries to last me into old age.” I dig my fork into a chocolate pudding that oozes more molten chocolate in response.
“The answer…” I wrap my mouth around the food, then slip the fork from my mouth and make a chef’s kiss sign.
“… is moments of pure, unadulterated, hideous indulgence, like this.”
She follows my lead with the same chocolate pudding, her lips, tongue, teeth hilariously smothered with brown scrumptiousness as she says, “To your arthritic joints.”
Shaking my head, I smile. I love how much she entertains me, even taking the piss out of me. She’s confident, guard down, and it feels special, as if I get a glimpse into a side of her that’s hidden too often by troubles.
I’m somewhere between a sugar coma and heaven, the latter, I think, solely down to Annie.
“You were right,” she says, sucking chocolate from her finger in a way that has my undivided attention. “This was a good idea.”
“I’m full of them, I promise.” Even if watching her now, I’m having wildly inappropriate thoughts about that beautiful mouth being wrapped around more than her finger. “When I retire, I might write a book about how to put yourself into a food coma.”
“Could be a niche audience.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Well, you’re the brains, Annie Bannie, I’m the brawn in this relationship.”
She leans into her elbows on the tabletop, resting her chin on her hands. “You do that a lot.”
“What’s that?”
“Make out you’re dumb when you’re not.”
I mirror her pose. “Look who’s talking.”
“I don’t call myself stupid.”
“No, but you do underestimate yourself, put yourself down, take other people’s failings on your own shoulders.”
She sits back into her seat, the way her eyes fill telling me I’ve unintentionally hit a nerve but I can’t let this slide. I’ve made it my mission to make her appreciate how fucking incredible and worthy she is.
“You got a chance to interview me and the guys,” I tell her. “So let me ask you something. What are you good at? What do you love to do?”
She fidgets and clears her throat – I fix on her, not letting her worm out of this. “I’m a good mama,” she says, eventually.
“No, you’re a fucking incredible mama. What else?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know, Tanner. What do you think I’m good at?”
I shake my head, waiting.
“Helping Daddy on the ranch. I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do. You keep that ranch going without your mama. You keep your daddy together. You give Colton the freedom to do what he needs to do for himself away from Sunshine Ranch. What else?”
“Nothing. I – I’m good with animals. The horses and Bear.”
“Yeah, you are. What else?”
“School, I suppose.”
“You’re crushing it. What do you love?”
“I don’t know. All those things.”
I nod, smiling as I see her growing in confidence a tiny bit with each answer. “What’s your superpower?”
“I don’t have a superpower and I didn’t ask that question.”
“No, this one is my question. I want to know the answer.”
“Tanner, there’s really nothing remarkable about me, I’m afraid.”
“I disagree but what do you wish your superpower was?”
She takes a big breath and exhales. “Bringing people back. Making people want to stay.” Her eyes are filling again. “Why are you asking this?” she whispers.
“Because you don’t see yourself the way other people do, Annie. The way I see you. And it kills me. None of us can bring people back or force people to want to stay. But d’you know what you can do, what you do, and what I think your superpower is?”
She swallows deeply, two pools of sincerity matching my gaze. “Making the people who can stay and who choose to stay infinitely better by having you in their lives. I’ve never known anyone be able to light up a room like you do, Annie. You have each guy at training hanging on your every word.”
“That’s the pecan pie.”
I laugh at her sass but it’s short-lived. “No, it’s you. Nelson, your daddy, Colton, Sas, Betty and me, we all adore you because you’re a goddamn ray of sunshine wherever you go. My sister spent one night in your company and she hasn’t stopped raving about you since.”
“Well unless she starts buying magazines because they have my face on, I’d say I’m still the bigger stan of the two of us.”
She smiles gently, timidly.
“But do you know if I could give you one gift, what it would be, Annie?” She wraps a lock of hair around her finger and shrugs.
“Self-belief. Confidence in the fact you can and will crush everything you decide to take on in life because you’re so fucking strong.
If you fail at something, it will only make you fiercer because that’s the woman you are.
You get knocked down and you fucking rise back up. I love that about you.”
“Would you like anything else, sir?” a waiter asks, appearing at the table, stealing my attention.
“The check, please,” I tell him, looking back to Annie as I take out my wallet and drop a card to the table.
As I do, another card falls onto the table. Recognizing the hotel room key card from Dallas that I kept because it reminded me of Annie and what happened between us, I reach out to pick it up. But Annie beats me to it.
“I must have forgotten to give it back,” I say, taking it from her. I don’t even know why I’m trying to hide the way I feel anymore. Us not having a relationship has nothing to do with me not feeling enough for her. I feel everything for her.
It’s so much other stuff that’s standing in the way.
“Tanner?”
“Yeah.”
“You make me want to believe in myself. I think that might be your superpower.”
She stands from the table when the waiter pulls out her chair and I offer her my hand. I have no idea what it implies or if it really means anything but as we head back to the car it’s the easiest decision I’ve made today to fold my hand around hers.
I open the driver side door for her. “Miss Quinn, your ride.”
“Don’t you mean your ride, since I’m the designated driver?”
I chuckle. As I do, Annie reaches for my face and I think she’s going to kiss me. And I’m so fucking here for it. I drop my hands to her hips, as one of her hands presses against my chest, but the other…
“You had dessert in your beard,” she tells me, as I’m wondering if my legs are still attached to my body because they’re weightless when she looks at me the way she’s looking at me now. When the heat of her body is setting off an inferno in my hold.
But I’m with it enough to realize she wasn’t going to kiss me at all.
“Thanks,” I tell her, dropping my hands, wishing I could read her mind because in these small moments, I think there’s a chance my feelings might be reciprocated, at least in part.
Then I remember why we’re even standing here, in this basement garage, having eaten more sugar than there is on an entire plantation. Annie’s driving lesson. Getting her through her test for her and Nelson’s sake.
“You know, if someone had told me a year ago that you’d become my best friend, I’d have laughed and said why on earth would a guy like that want to hang out with little old me?” she says.
What would I want with her? I’m absolutely gone for her. Everything about her.
She presses her lips to my cheek then climbs into the car. I close the door behind her and pause for a shaky breath.
I’m so fucking in love with her, it’s a disaster.