Calmly, Carefully, Completely (7 page)

“I think Reagan did enough damage,” Dad warns. “Stop torturing the boy.” He glares at me, too. I want to hide my face in shame.

Suddenly, I notice the way that Pete is holding his left wrist in his hand. My gaze shoots up to meet his, and I don’t see anything but curiosity. He should be fuming mad. He has every right to be. “Is your arm hurt?” I ask quietly.

The corners of Pete’s lips tilt in a small smile. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Dad gripes. “It might be broken.”

“Oh shit,” I breathe.

“Reagan,” Mom warns.

“Oh shit,” Link parrots.

Shit again. Now Link’s repeating me.

“Oh shit,” Link says again.

I bury my face in my hands. My parents are going to kill me when they get me alone.

“Reagan, I want you to take the truck into town and take Pete to Urgent Care,” Dad says.

I lift my head. He can’t be serious.

“Oh shit,” Link chimes in. Mom grits her teeth.

Dad motions for me to get up and tosses the keys to his truck at my head so that I have to catch them. “Dad,” I complain.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t particularly want to be in an enclosed space with you any more than you want to be in one with me,” Pete says. He gingerly touches his eye, his face scrunching up.

I deserve that. I really do. I heave a sigh. “Let’s go.”

Pete follows me to Dad’s truck, and then he opens the driver’s-side door for me to climb in. “Thanks,” I grumble. He goes around the truck and gets in the passenger side. “Are you sure you’re injured?”

“My heart’s broken,” he says.

My head jerks up. “What?”

His voice drops down low. “It absolutely kills me that you think I would try to hurt you.” He turns to face me directly. “I remember the way you looked that night. I would never, ever do anything to hurt you like that.”

I start the truck. It’s easier to avoid this conversation if I have something to occupy my hands and a reason not to look at him.

“Never mind.” Pete grunts, turning away from me. He faces the window and lays his temple against it. He cradles his wrist in his hand and doesn’t even look my way.

Pete

I don’t know what to say to her. I have no idea how to address this. I know my wrist hurts, but I also know it’s not broken. Her dad was insistent that she take me to Urgent Care, so I let him send us off. She’s been sitting there in the driver’s seat as we go down the road saying nothing for about ten minutes. Every now and then, she opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, and then she slams it shut.

Suddenly, she jerks the truck to the right, sliding into a turn-out spot and then slams on the breaks. I brace myself with my hands and instantly regret it when pain steals up my wrist. “Shit,” I mutter.

She heaves a sigh and drops her face into her hands. After a moment, she looks up, her green eyes meeting mine. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

That hurt like a mother fucker, and I’m irritated enough to want her to suffer for a minute. “For which part?” I gripe. I pull my wrist closer to my body and cradle it.

“All of it,” she says. She takes a deep breath and tears well up in her eyes. She blinks them back furiously. All of my anger melts at the sight of her tears.

“I’m fine,” I grumble. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” Okay, that was crass and a little demeaning, but I’m still a little sore.

“You’re not fine,” she interjects. “I hit you.” She grits her teeth. “In the face.”

Silence falls over the cab of the truck like a wet blanket.

“I still have some issues from that night,” she finally says. She lays her head back against the headrest and looks up at the ceiling.

“Where’d you learn martial arts?” I ask. I may as well be sticking her full of pins and twisting them. And not in the good acupuncture way. I should let her off the hook.

“My dad taught me.” She looks over at me. She is so fucking vulnerable all of a sudden. “After what happened at college, I took a self-defense class. I realized I’m really good at it, so I kept going and got better.”

I press gently at my eye socket. Her face gets soft, and she looks so sorry. But she just left that comment hanging there in the air, and I feel the need to grab on to it. “Does it make you feel safer, knowing you can lay a man out flat?” I ask.

Her face pales, and she looks away. “Not right this second.”

“But usually?” I ask. Her face is still pale, and she her gaze skitters everywhere but at me.

“I like knowing that I can get away from danger,” she says quietly.

“You think I’m dangerous?”
Lie to me, princess
. Because my gut’s already twisting at the very thought of her being afraid of me.

“In that moment,” she hedges. “Can we just not talk about it?”

We need to talk about it. But I can tell she really doesn’t want to. “Okay,” I say, completely unbidden by me. It’s all her. It’s what she needs. “When I touch you, does your skin crawl?” I blurt out. I need to know what I’m up against here.

She nods and inhales deeply, acting as if I just tossed her a lifeline. “You make my heart beat faster, in a really, really good way.” She finally looks into my face. “I know you can’t forgive me, but I’m really sorry.”

I reach to take her face in my hand, but she flinches and draws back, so I let my hand drop into my lap. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you. It’s all my fault.” I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to make this right for her. If it were any other guy, I would be fucking ecstatic that she hit him in the face rather than let him grab her.

“It’s not your fault,” she protests. “It’s my fault.” I feel more than hear her say something under her breath that sounds like
his fault
.

“I just didn’t want you to walk away until I got to explain,” I say. “I grabbed your shirt.”

“And I felt like I couldn’t get away there for a minute. I know that wasn’t your intention.”

I shake my head. “No, that was my intention. I didn’t want you to get away. Your instincts were right.”

“But you didn’t intend to hurt me.”

“You had no way of knowing that.”
God, am I stupid. I’m arguing with her about all the reasons why she hit me.

“Then my dad shoved your face in the dirt.” She looks a little irked by that.

“Hell, princess, if I watched my daughter clock some asshole, I’d immediately assume it was his fault. Your dad did the right thing.” I believe that. That’s what dads are for. Well, mine wasn’t, but I have Paul and the others. They would protect me with their lives. Her dad did nothing less than they would have done for me. “Your dad knows all about the assault?”

She nods, biting her lower lip between her teeth. “Can you forgive me?” she asks.

“Nothing to forgive,” I say. She stares at me. “Forgiven,” I say instead. “I promise.”

She takes a deep breath. “Thanks.”

Are we going to discuss the elephant in the room? The reason why she was charging away from me in the first place. “I shouldn’t have made you feel like you had to get up and run away from me,” I admit. We could have avoided the whole punching-and-rolling-in-the-dirt fiasco if I’d just kept my mouth shut and not talked about my dick and how hard she made me. I get that little stirring in my lap just thinking about it. I groan beneath my breath.

“What?” she asks. “Are you hurting?”

Yep. I’m hurting. But not the way she thinks. “A little,” I admit. My wrist hurts.

“I like the way you like me,” she says. Her voice is so quiet that I can barely hear her.

“What?” I ask. I lean closer to her, but she leans away.

She grins and shakes her head. “I like the way you like me,” she says again, this time a little louder.

A smile tugs at the corners of my lips.

“You make me feel things,” she admits. Her face isn’t pale anymore. If anything, her cheeks are rosy.

“Right back at you,” I say.

“You can stop smirking now,” she says, but she’s laughing. This is good.

“You tell me you like me and you expect me to stop smirking?” I lay my good hand on my chest. “You have to be kidding me. I might have to do somersaults.”

“I don’t like men,” she says quietly.

“Oh.” I don’t get a lesbian vibe from her at all. Not a bit. But I’ve been wrong before. “You like women?”

She buries her face in her hands and lifts her head, laughing. “No!” she barks. “I don’t like women.” She does that little dance with her eyes again, looking everywhere but at me. “I like men. But you’re the only man I’ve liked for a long time.” She closes her eyes and flings her head back, groaning. “Being normal shouldn’t be this difficult!” she cries.

“Princess, you are anything but normal,” I say, laughter bubbling inside me.

She shrugs, looking a little chagrined. “I don’t know how to change.”

I laugh. “I wouldn’t change you for anything.”

Her eyes shoot to meet mine. There’s
a vulnerability there, and I see something else. Hope? “I feel like I’ve known you for a really long time,” she says.

“Yep.” She likes me. She likes me lots. I’m suddenly more full of confidence than I have been in a long time. “If you tell me you want me to stay away from you while I’m camping in your backyard, you just say the word.” I wait a pause. She doesn’t say anything. “But if you don’t tell me to stay away from you, I’m going to keep trying to get to know you. And then when you get back to NYU, I’m going to take you out to dinner.”

Her brow furrows. “A date?”

“Yep.”

“You’re kind of cocky, aren’t you?” she asks.

“Yep.”

“Why were you in prison?” she blurts out.

This time it’s me who freezes. “I thought you knew about all that.”

She nods. “I knew you were there, but I don’t know why.”

“Do you care?”

She shrugs.

I mirror her actions. “What does that mean?”

“My dad was in prison,” she admits. “And not many people know that so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread it around.”

“What for?”

“People do stupid things when they’re desperate,” she says.

Yes, they do. “I made a mistake,” I try to explain. But it’s difficult to speak about why I did something stupid trying to protect one of my brothers. I can’t even begin to explain it.

“You didn’t hurt anybody, did you?” she asks. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye.

“No,” I admit. “Just me. And my brothers when they put me in jail.” I heave a sigh. “I disappointed everyone, including myself.”

She smiles and says, “So what did we learn from today?” She looks all bright and sunny and reminds me of my eighth-grade science teacher, who I had a massive crush on.

“I learned never to grab you when you’re trying to walk away from me.”

She nods. She says very quietly, “I learned that I really like sharing my chocolate milk with you.”

My gut twists. “I like talking to you,” I admit.

“Me, too,” she whispers.

I touch my eye again. “You pack a mean punch. Remind me never to walk up on you in a dark alley.” I think about it a minute. “Or a dark barn.”

“Or a sunny picnic area,” she grumbles playfully.

I laugh. “Wait till my brothers hear that you punched me.”

“Will they think it’s funny?”

“When my brother Logan met his fiancée, Emily, she punched him in the face.”

She covers her mouth with her fingertips. “Oh,” she breathes.

“He says if you ever meet a girl who punches you in the face when you deserve it, you should marry her.” I laugh. I still love that story. “Logan put the moves on Emily within seconds of meeting her, and she broke his nose.” I lift up my injured arm. “You just broke my arm. Not quite the same effect.”

“Well, you weren’t putting the moves on me,” she says with a laugh.

“Oh, I was,” I admit. “I’m just not as smooth as Logan.”

“Thank God,” she breathes. I scrunch my eyebrows together, which makes her rush on to say, “If you were any less subtle, you would probably scare me to death.” She grins. “I like it.”

“You want me to stop trying to put the moves on you?” I ask. I wait anxiously.

She heaves a sigh. “No.”

“Don’t sound so excited about it,” I grouse.

“I don’t know what to do with all these feelings,” she admits.

My gut twists. “Me, neither.”

“So, what do we do now?” she asks.

I hold up my injured arm by the wrist. “I think I need a doctor.”

She rushes to turn the truck back on. “I almost forgot you’re injured!”

I didn’t forget. And I won’t forget to be careful with her from now on. But she likes the way I make her feel. That’s a good start.

Reagan

The doctor says his wrist isn’t broken, thank goodness. It’s just strained. It’s not even sprained. He recommends that Pete take an anti-inflammatory and rest it. Pete seems satisfied with that.

The questions about Pete’s quickly blackening eye were a little unsettling.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to call the police so they can arrest the person who assaulted you?” the nurse asks. She’s been flirting with him ever since we walked in the door.

“I’m sure. It wasn’t intentional.” His eyes meet mine over her head as she wraps his wrist. Her hands linger a little too long on his, and I see his eyes lower to look down her top. She makes a twittering noise when she catches him.

“You’re new in town?” she asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.” She looks him in the eye and smiles. “I’m certain I would remember you if I had.”

Pete smiles at me and rolls his eyes. “I’m from the city,” he says. He plays with his piercing, and I can’t draw my eyes from his lips, watching him as he toys with the hoop with the tip of his tongue.

“Well, if you ever want a tour of our little town, you just let me know.”

“I don’t think we’ll need that,” I blurt out.

Pete raises his brow at me, but his eyes are twinkling so brightly that I can tell he’s amused.

I rush to continue. I drop my voice down to what I hope is a sultry purr. “I really don’t plan to let him out of bed long enough to see the sights.” I laugh. It was close to a twitter.

She freezes. “Oh, I didn’t realize…” she says.

“I can tell,” I toss back. I glare at her, and she has the decency to flush.

“I’ll be right back,” she mutters as she runs from the room.

A noise bubbles up from within Pete. It might be laughter. But if it is, I think he’s going to die from it. He laughs, his shoulders shaking until he falls back to lie on the exam table, his belly rocking as
he guffaws out loud. I stand up, walk to his side, and look down at him. “And just what do you find so amusing?” I ask.

He wipes the tears from beneath his eyes with his knuckles. “You had to save me from the nurse,” he cackles. “That’s some funny shit right there,” he says. He’s still wiping his eyes, the laughter starting to die back. “Why did you do that?” he asks. “She was harmless.”

I look toward the door, remembering her beautiful smile; long, dark hair; and please-touch-me personality. I could never compete, at least not with the last part of it. “She was about as harmless as a piranha in a tank full of goldfish.”

He laughs again, big achingly beautiful belly laughs. When it dies down, I realize how close I’m standing to him. He lifts his hand and reaches to place it on my hip. But an inch before it settles there, he says, “I’m going to touch you,” very softly. My heart leaps. “I’m warning you so you won’t hit me.”

“Where?” I whisper. His hand is really close to my hip, but I want to be sure. My pulse thrums.

“Don’t hit me anywhere,” he whispers back playfully.

I roll my eyes at him, but my insides are flipping over themselves.

His hand lands on my hip, warm and strong. It’s not intrusive at all. But I close my eyes because the sensuality of his touch combined with the heat in his eyes makes me want to run far, far away. I don’t, though. I let him touch my hip.

“That’s not so bad, is it?” he asks quietly.

I shake my head. “It’s all right, I suppose,” I say softly. I can barely take a breath, much less talk. He sits up and very gently leads me to stand between his legs with gentle pressure at my waist.

“Do you want to hit me?” he asks.

I shake my head and finally let my gaze meet his. “No,” I say quietly.

“If you did, it would be worth it,” he says softly. His nose touches mine, his lips a mere breath away. I lay my hand on his stomach, and I feel the muscles contract. I jerk my hand back, but he puts his over mine and presses it gently against him. “I like it when you touch me,” he says. “You can do it any time you want.”

He brushes his nose gently against mine in little
eskimo kisses. His lips hover over mine, but they never meet, and I feel like I might pass out from the fear that comes with wanting him to kiss me so badly. “Kiss me,” I say.

He freezes, and his hand tightens on my hip. “Nope.” He shakes his head.

I pull my head back and look into his eyes. “It’s all right,” I say. “I want to try it.”

He sets me back from him. “Nope,” he says again. He shakes his head even more vehemently.

“Why not?” I can’t believe I’m begging this man to kiss me. Is this what I’ve been reduced to?

He heaves a sigh. “I’m not going to kiss you because I can’t tell if you want to kiss
me
or if you want to kiss someone you don’t think is a threat for practice.”

“What if it’s a little bit of both?” I ask.

He shakes his head, and I think he might be a little bit pissed. “When you feel an overwhelming desire to kiss me—” He stops and pats his chest. “—When you want to kiss Pete,” he says. “I’ll kiss you. If you want to practice, you can find someone else to help you out.”

I don’t understand. “It’s just a kiss.”

He takes my chin in a gentle grip and forces me to look into his eyes. “When I finally kiss you, it’s going to be because you want to kiss me, Pete, the man, the one who looks at you with wonder in his eyes, the one who is so fucking scared of these brand-new feelings for you that he sometimes can’t breathe, the one who is dying to taste you. I have thought about you almost every day since I met you, princess, and I don’t want to get you off my mind.” He kisses the tip of my nose quickly and pulls back. “But when I kiss you, it’s going to be because you have a thing for me that’s as big as the thing I have for you.”

I can’t help it. I look toward his lap. He chuckles.

“Yeah, that too,” he says with a laugh.

“So what do we do now?” I ask. I can’t believe it. The first time I have wanted to kiss someone since the assault and he’s too much of a gentleman to take me up on it.

“Let’s go shopping,” he says. He nods, as though he’s thinking it over. “Do we have to be in a hurry to get back to camp?”

I shrug. We probably should. “Dad will light up my phone if I’m not back in an hour or two.”

He nods and looks down at his watch. “It’s almost lunchtime.” He grins. “I think it’s time for our third date.”

I roll my eyes and follow him out of the exam room. My knees are still wobbly from our near kiss. If he ever really kisses me, I’ll probably turn into a puddle on the floor.