Page 30 of When We Met

“Plates.”

I fall into his dark eyes and know if I stare too long, there’s no going back. “Oh, right.”

“You’re awfully young to be out of town on your own.”

“Old enough.”

He waits as if he’s not going to speak again until I tell him. And then I think, oh, shit. What if he thinks I’m a runaway who stole my dad’s car?

“I’m twenty-one.”

There’s an emotion in his eyes, a tightening of his hand around his glass that I don’t miss. He blinks it away just as quickly and recovers with “Where ya headin’?”

“Anywhere but there.”

“Can’t say I’d stay there either.” He nods, setting his glass down on the coffee table. “Everyone I’ve ever known who lived there never had honest intentions.” His attention is on the glass in front of him, but his words, and the baritone way they rake over my skin, I’m fucking sweating. I can tell by his mannerisms, emotionally unattached is putting this guy in a category too predictable.

Tara definitely fucked him over.

“Have you ever left Texas?”

“Once.” Bringing the whiskey to his lips, his chest expands with a breath, his eyes distant. “Got to the California border and turned back.”

“Why?”

His dark brown eyes shift to mine, and their heat has me twisted toward him, unintentionally. Had I been drawn here for more than just a pee break and a deer that jumped on my hood? Had this guy been put in my path for a reason? “Decided she wasn’t worth it.” He swallows the drink he takes and then blinks away the pain, tipping his glass at the photograph on the wall of him and his kids. “They were though.”

I don’t have to ask for an explanation. He chose his kids over Tara, and I don’t blame him one bit.

Lifting my glass, I down the remainder of the whiskey. “I’m getting tired.”

He stands. “I’ll let you get some sleep.” He waits. Our eyes meet and hold. “I’ll look at your car in the morning if you want.”

I get lost in the shades of brown that draw me in. It’s like looking into a canyon on a starry night and seeing every color imaginable, but knowing they’re all shades of the same color. “I’d appreciate that. I don’t know how I’m getting out of here.”

His eyes drift to the window. “It may take a few days.”

I hate the way my heart aches for that to be true.

Stay in your room. Turns out, I’ve never been very good at listening.

BARRON

“I’d like to look at you naked, but that’s not going to happen tonight.”

Why’d she say that? Why’d she have to fucking say that? I’m pissed because the second she put the words out there, my mind can’t move past them. I stare at the alarm clock on my nightstand and watch the minutes tick by. My mind won’t let me drift off to sleep. I fight with myself. The urge to open the door and take her in my arms battles with the need to leave her alone. I don’t need this in my life, or their life. There’s a reason why I don’t date. They don’t need women in their lives. It will only confuse them because I’m not falling in love again. Been there. Done that. It fucked me over. I’m stubborn enough to never try that out again.

As I stare at my nightstand, a memory gnaws its way from the edges of my thoughts. The one where Tara left the ring on the nightstand. The one where she waited until I was asleep before she slipped away into the darkness.

That’s been my experience with love, and I know enough about myself that I don’t want that again. I don’t need it.

I also don’t get any sleep. As you can imagine. For two reasons. My kids are in the house, and I’ve just invited a stranger into our home. I know nothing about her. She could kill us in our sleep for all I know.

Not likely since she probably weighs as much as my legs, and I could take her down with less effort than it takes to carry around two kids on my shoulders, but you never fucking know these days.

And my second reason. I keep thinking about dragging her into my room and having hot, sweaty I-don’t-know-you sex that doesn’t mean anything.

Fucking sue me.

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