Page 123 of Seven Year Itch
“You’re not welcome.”
“I’m not surprised!”
I slam open the door of her shop as I step outside, my heart racing a mile a minute when the cool spring air hits me in the face. God, that woman makes me crazy. She knows how hard I worked on those shelves, and she’s being a brat about it just to get back at me.
Well, never again. My days of doing anything for Dakota Schaefer are fucking over.
I take several deep breaths in my truck, my body shaking overthe fact that the entire time she was reaming me out, I just wanted to grab her face and kiss her. She’s so stubborn, she can’t even admit the truth and see that the bigger picture is so beyond this bullshit from our past. We are both different people now. She’s better. I’m better. We’re better.
Right?
Fuck, maybe I’m not better. I’m sitting in my truck steaming mad waiting for my brothers to get their dicks out of their hands so we can go. Maybe I’m no different than the fucking screwup I’ve always been. I’m in no position to love anyone right now. I can’t even get my damn life together. Killer Calder strikes again.
By the time my brothers join me in my truck, I’m breathing a little easier, and the time alone has allowed me to get control of myself.
As we drive back to Fletcher Mountain, Luke kicks my seat from his place in the back. “Can I state the obvious?”
“What?” I grumble through clenched teeth as I glance at a silent Wyatt beside me.
“No one fights likethatwith someone they aren’t madly in love with.” Luke arches a knowing brow at me in the rearview mirror.
I blink away the painful truth behind his remark. “She doesn’t love me.”
Wyatt does the Wyatt thing and says a million words without saying a single sentence.
“She doesn’t fucking love me,” I growl. “You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. The girl is crazy. She’d rather hold on to the past than admit she might be wrong about something.”
“Well, are you good at admitting when you’re wrong?” Wyatt asks, his voice rough from lack of using it.
“What does that mean?”
He clears his throat and stares ahead as we make our way out of town. “It would seem to me you’re more focused on punishing her for being hurt than doing what you need to do to mend whatever hurt you may have caused.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt her,” I argue, my throat tight as emotion swells inside of me. “I was trying to protect her. I’d do fucking anything for her. Anything. Even if she’s being annoying or nagging or controlling or overbearing... God, none of that bothers me. Weirdly, that shit is what I love most about her. I fucking...” My voice breaks, and I fight against the sting in my eyes and the swelling of my heart.
I decide to lay it all out there. “I love her.”
The silence is heavy in the cab of the truck as those words hang in the air and fully sink in. I haven’t said it out loud until this very moment. I’ve been fighting the feelings all week and hoped that seeing her today might help me realize it was all in my head. She’s not my person.
But she is.
I love her just as much today as I did when she was screaming at me from the parking lot of a sex club.
“I love her,” I say it again for good measure, and it feels good to get it out. Like relief. Like I’m no longer fighting something inside of me that I needed to let out.
“Then, you have to prove that to her, man,” Luke says leaning over the back seat.
“How?”
“I don’t know. I’m single as fuck,” he replies with a laugh. “And apparently horrible at relationship advice if you ask Addison, so maybe I should shut the fuck up.”
“What is that supposed to mean? What’s up with you and Addison?”
He laughs, and I hear him shift in his seat. “She’s off her rocker. She’s literally looking for a husband so she can take over her dad’s lumberyard.”
“She needs a husband to do that?” I ask, frowning over that random addition.
“I don’t know. I’m at my wit’s end with her.” He sighs and I hear him murmur under his breath, “If you and Dakota work things out, I’m about to be lonely as fuck on Fletcher Mountain.”
