Page 72 of Axe Backwards
He dropped the hair with a huff and tapped my shoulder. I turned and looked up at him.
“Why are you making that face?” His eyes softened. The man was so damn perceptive. He could sense small shifts in my mood, sometimes even before I did.
“It’s nothing.”
He stole the bag of chips and held them out of my reach. “It’s not. Talk.”
Lips pressed together, I exhaled through my nose and stood, retrieving the bag and sitting next to him. “My ex always said I had an annoying laugh.”
He stiffened. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope.” I emphasized thep, my lips making a popping sound. “He said it was too much.”
He had that opinion when it came to a lot of my qualities, really. I was too loud, too excitable. My hips were too wide, my ears too big, and my taste was terrible.
“You know how wild my hand motions get when I’m talking, and yeah, I am loud, but he was so offended by it.”
He arched an unimpressed brow. “And you were okay with that?”
I winced. Every time I talked about Graham, I was surprised by how bad things sounded out loud. While I was wading through the thick of things, it all seemed normal. I’d always figured that he loved me and wanted what was best for me. That he was only telling me so I could work on reining in my flaws. So maybe my laugh was weird. Maybe I should have been quiet and serious.
“We’d go to charity events or out to dinner with his clients, and afterward, in the car on the way home, he’d scold me for what I said or how I behaved.”
Noah scooted forward, narrowing his eyes. “He scolded you?”
I examined the tortilla chip I was still holding, deliberately avoiding his eyes. “Yeah. He’d pick apart everything I said andpoint out all my wrongdoings. I was too loud. I’d said something that embarrassed him. I should have passed the pepper to the right. That kind of stuff.”
Sighing, Noah kissed Tess’s head. She was nestled in one of his many wraps, snoozing on his chest. It was stupidly adorable. This big, strong man dressed in sweats and a tight T-shirt, all his ink on display, with a purple baby swaddle thing wrapped around him and those sweet blond curls peeking out.
Thank God I wasn’t attracted to men anymore. If I was, it would be a problem.
A serious problem.
“Vic, I say this with total respect. But why did you allow this man to live?”
I grasped the throw pillow beside me and considered tossing it at him. In the end, not wanting to wake Tess, I settled for flipping him the bird while shoving a chip into my mouth.
It started when I was a child. The feeling that I was too much. I’d always had a tendency to get overly excited about things. At school, I sat in the front row and raised my hand each time the teacher asked a question.
I cared.
I tried hard.
Yet, for some reason, that was bad.
“My mother was always horrified by me.” I picked at the fringe along the edge of the throw pillow, pushing down the defeat that always plagued me when I talked about the way my mom treated me when I was a child. “My crooked ponytail, my loud voice. She called me a loudmouth. Sometimes I interrupt people. I know it’s rude, but it’s not intentional. I just get so excited.”
“It’s okay.” He squeezed my knee and stood. From the way he eyed the floor, then his sleeping daughter, it was clear he wished he could drop and do a set of pushups, but he settled for lungesinstead. I didn’t mind. In fact, I liked it. This meant he was comfortable around me. That he didn’t feel as though he had to force himself to sit still when the urge to move hit him.
“No, it’s not. It even affected my career. I’ve never mastered the ability to be cool and impersonal. Looking stone-faced in meetings? Forget it. I’d feel things, and you know me.”
He turned back toward me, one leg out, hands on his hips. “Yeah. You have no poker face.”
“Long ago I made peace with the knowledge that I’d never be one of the cool girls. You know, all aloof and disinterested and quiet.”
“Can I offer something?” He stepped, lunged, and stepped again, then turned.
I picked up my water bottle, appreciating the view of his very round, very muscular ass in those mesh shorts as he squeezed his glutes.
