Page 216 of Smoke and Fire
Another giggle peeped out of her. I stared at her, incredulous.
"I'm sorry," she whispered and put a hand on my arm. "I'm not laughing at you. Those are . . . those are just the most romantic words I've ever heard.You give me anxiety."
Stated that way, they sounded utterly and completely ridiculous. They weren't wrong either, which only made it more funny. The warmth in her voice softened my fear, however, and I felt myself smile.
"It's true," I muttered.
She put a hand to her chest.
"I'm honored."
The sound of Mark talking to a horse came seconds before thethudof hooves followed. In the haze, Mark headed toward my truck and the horse trailer attached, one horse towed behind him. Dahlia held up a hand to me, then darted away. I closed my eyes, grateful for a moment to rally my thoughts back together.
Expecting a blast of self loathing for mucking things upagain, I braced myself for the worst thoughts to follow. Then I blinked myself back to the moment when it didn't happen. In fact, right now I felt pretty good.
The things I'd wanted to admit about myself were finally out. Not having them locked inside removed the pressure. Which was just . . . stupid easy. Now the only things that remained were questions about her.
Was Jakob still around?
Did shewant me?
Minutes passed. The sound of scuffling, a whinny of protest, and a few soothing words from Mark later, Dahlia reappeared.
Mark jogged away, back toward the lake. Dahlia stopped in front of me with a little cough. Wind made her hair dance around her shoulders. The blasts of air felt coarse and abrasive and too strong. She played with the bottom of a lock of hair as she reapproached. She blinked several times, her eyes no doubt irritated by the smoky air. She cleared her throat, and a semblance of the same awkwardness returned. In it, I fully comprehended that I had just told her she gave me anxiety.
Real smooth.
"You were saying?" she murmured, then tacked on with a quick grin, "You know, that I give you anxiety and make you spiral into a mental mess."
I chuckled. "Yes. That. Just that there's a lot of things I don't understand right now. Things I don't have the answer to, like Jess. But one thing that Idoknow is that I want to have a chance to get to know you better."
The words made me cringe.Get to know you bettersounded so formal, like a stiff, awkward first date. Plus, they weren't right. They didn't hold the same amount of power as what I felt all the way in my bones.
The pressure of all the romance books that I'd written weighed on my shoulders. What would Adrick say? Derrick? Rodrigo? I shoved them all aside. They didn't matter right now.
Those words weren't enough.
“Ravage you." I cleared my throat. "That's what I meant. I want to kiss you until you can't find your breath ever again. I want to have my hands on you until you don't remember that other guy who broke your heart. I want to play with your hair all night while I hold you in my arms and we stare up at the stars."
Her eyes widened like globes. Dahlia sucked in a sharp breath and held it. Honoring the truth sent courage through me. Finally, I would lay it out there for a woman to decide what to do with.
"The only thing that held me back from kissing you the other day was the genuine sadness in your voice when you spoke about Jakob," I continued. "If I never heard his name again, I'd die a happy man. I want to do more than get to know you better, Dahlia. I want to test all my romance novels with you. Figure out how to giveyoubutterflies. How to say your name so that you get goosebumps. I want to touch every inch of your body. I want to prove that maybe I don't have to do everything alone."
My throat knotted.
Being the son and the brother had sucked up all my bandwidth. Fire was the only choice I actively made. I hadn't let go of it, because then I really would have been lost. Lost in expectations and care. Lost in the miasma of medical issues and helplessness. Fire had been my only anchor, my tether, to me.
My life had always been sculpted by the people that didn’t want me. By the people that left. My birth parents. My adopted Mom. Even the girlfriends that walked away from Dad because they didn’t want to deal with his children.
Deep down, I finally understood what I’d avoided all along: that writing romance novels was my safest attempt to create the relationship I desperately wanted.
The relationships so honest and powerful they couldn’t be real.
The ones that must be fiction.
Somewhere along the way, I believed that romantic novels had a guaranteed-happily-ever-afters that didn’t apply to life in the same way. That had been a lie too.
Because now?
