Chapter 22 #2
I relax against him, settling my head on the curve of his strong, broad shoulders.
“The first boy to disappoint me was in kindergarten. I wanted to marry him, so I challenged him to an arm-wrestling match, somehow thinking my strength would impress him. It didn’t.
All his friends laughed that he’d been beaten by a girl. He cried and never talked to me again.”
He tilts his head, rubbing his cheek against my hair. “He was weak.”
“In fairness, he was six.” I let my fingers dance across his collarbone.
“When I had a mad crush on Adian from my intramural co-ed softball league, I begged Ryder to help me practice so I’d be good.
Adian was all for it until we played against each other, and not only did I strike him out every time he was at bat, but I also hit a grand slam off him to win the game.
That night, he sat next to Emma Nowak at the Dairy Queen instead of me. ”
The muscles along his spine ease. He picks up one of my hands and presses it to his lips. “He sounds like an idiot.”
I laugh. “The summer after eighth grade, I got my braces off, my period, boobs, and morphed from awkward tween to…well… It was an improvement. My first party as a freshman, the captain of the football team hard-core flirted with me, and I thought, finally, someone older and mature.”
“Let me guess, not mature.”
“Not even a little bit. That’s when I discovered there were different requirements for girlfriends.
He liked that guys envied him but hated me for making them want me.
It was always my fault. My skirt was too short.
Or my top too low. If I was nice, I was flirting.
You get the point. But I was a dumb kid, so I stayed with him through almost all of high school.
We broke up when he met and married a nice, wholesome girl in college who didn’t give men lustful thoughts. ”
“So, an insecure idiot.”
I smile, pressing my lips to his neck. “I met Owen in one of my prelaw classes my junior year. I said no, but he was relentless in his pursuit, and eventually, I caved. The details don’t matter, but the second I became his girlfriend, he changed.
Everything he said he loved about me, he ended up hating.
I was too bold. Too challenging. We broke up when I got a better score on the LSAT and landed the dream school that rejected him.
After that, I decided men and relationships weren’t worth it.
I couldn’t give them what they wanted, so I stopped giving them anything at all.
And that worked so well, I started to believe it. ”
He kisses the top of my head. “You have terrible taste in men.”
“Then I walked into that bar and met you.”
He stills, shifting a little. “Oh yeah?”
I press closer, tightening my arms around his neck. “I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you.”
“How do you feel?”
“Understood.”
“I never felt about anyone else the way I feel about you either.” He takes my hand and twines our fingers. “I want you so much it terrifies me.”
I whisper in his ear. “I left that night because when I woke up, I imagined standing at our cars and saying goodbye, and I knew I couldn’t fake indifference. It wasn’t because I’d just had the best sex in the world. It was all the space in between it.”
He clears his throat. “I hated that you were gone when I woke up. All I wanted to do was find you again.”
“And look, you did.”
His teeth scrape over my knuckles as he tightens his grasp. “You found me, not the other way around.”
I trace my tongue along the tendons of his throat before whispering, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“No?” He shoots me a sidelong glance.
“No. I tried, but it was miserable.”
He swallows and takes a deep breath. “I grew up in North Carolina, in a small backward mountain town nobody’s ever heard of. When I was fifteen, my parents died in a car accident.”
“That’s horrible.” I squeeze him tightly. How awful to lose your parents at such a critical age. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He cranes his neck and looks at me, meeting my eyes. “It was the happiest day of my life.”
Shock rolls through me. “Oh.”
He shifts his attention to the floor between his feet.
When he speaks, his voice is detached, like he’s talking about someone else.
“My parents were the antithesis of yours. My dad was a twenty-seven-year-old drug mule who got my sixteen-year-old mother pregnant and addicted. He was one of those paranoid prepper-type of guys who was always going on about the government and conspiracy theories. They didn’t believe in any systems. The only reason I even went to school was because I used to ride my bike to the library in town to teach myself to read, and someone reported them.
They were both fucked up, abusive, and there’s nothing good I can say, other than I knew how to take a beating and I was counting the seconds until I could leave. ”
My heart breaks at the words because I know he’s downplaying it. I can tell by the way he stares off and talks about it like it didn’t happen to him at all.
I comfort the only way I can, by remaining silent and pressing my body into his as a show of support. So he knows I’m here and not afraid.