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"Charlie snuggles me when I'm upset," she offered. It sounded ridiculous. But I imagined it was likely true.
"I'd have held you if you were upset," I countered.
That, oddly, seemed like the wrong thing to say as she finally moved to fold up, pulling her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and lowering her chin down on one.
"You're going to push me away, aren't you?" she asked, blunt, no pussyfooting around.
"Rey..."
"You are. You think that because of all of this - and because of whatever else you have been through - that you can't, I don't know, give me what I need."
She wasn't exactly wrong about that.
For someone who so often seemed to float through life, it was a little unsettling to realize she picked up on a lot more than you thought she did.
"Rey, I can't."
"How do you know unless you try?" she shot back, tone almost a little frustrated, a sound I had never heard from her before.
"I was trying. I was trying, babe. I sucked it up. I banked all the shit down. I took you out. I fought back all the shit that popped up in my head about how it was a terrible idea because someday, and there was no telling how soon or how far off, but someday, I was going to end up hurting you. I haven't taken a woman on a date in ten years. I haven't even fucking entertained the idea. There was no point."
"You can't keep throwing cryptic things at me, and expect me to accept them at face-value, Reeve."
"I don't talk about this," I admitted, looking down.
The years after... there had been so much fucking talking. To Cy. To Wasp. To the fucking therapists. The talking didn't change anything. It didn't make anything feel better. What was the point then? It just drudged up more pain.
"Maybe that is part of the problem," she said, nudging me with her foot until my gaze rose to find hers. "How can you expect me to understand where you're coming from, if I have no idea where that is? Give me a map or a compass here, Reeve. Maybe then I can navigate this. Or," she said, cutting me off when I started to object, "maybe I won't be able to. Maybe I will be just as lost. But then at least we will know, right? No more of you trying to be the bigger person, trying to save me from you. Let me see what I am up against, and then let me decide."
And, well, that was fair, wasn't it?
She deserved to know what it was about me and my past that made me feel like I could never be enough for her, could never give her what she would want and need from me.
I took as deep a breath as my ribs would allow, turning away from her, facing out into the room, not sure how I was going to handle this, and needing a bit of metaphorical space between us while I figured it out.
"It all started with her," I said, launching in before I could think better of it.
And it did.
It started with her.
Me, I was just barely of drinking age, on my own, making my living doing what I was good at - fixing shit.
And I got a call about faulty wiring in a rental place down in the bad side of 3rd Street. Even the outside was falling apart, literal piles of brick and crumbling mortar all around the foundations, one of the windows boarded up, glass scattered everywhere.
I thought nothing of it as I parked my two-generation-old pick-up truck in the driveway that was really just a patch of lawn turned dirt thanks to someone parking there consistently, and made my way to the front door, knocking on it impatiently, having another client in an hour, but this was an emergency call.
And then she answered.
Bombshell.
That would be the word that came to mind.
She wasn't pretty or beautiful or gorgeous. Each of those words had their own types of women attached to them.
This woman was five-feet-seven-inches of sex appeal. Her sleek black hair fell like a sheet halfway down her back, framing a face that was a bit too angular to be called anything other than striking. It got your attention with the sharp chin, high cheekbones, strong brows, caramel eyes, and full lips. The parts didn't seem like they should fit together, but somehow did.
And the body, well, that was all curves. Wide hips, big breasts, thick thighs, but slim waist.
Even clad in simple black jeans and a white tee, it was enticing. It was the kind of body you saw and immediately knew you needed to know what all of it looked like.
She had been older too.
I had always been shit at telling someone's age by looking at them, but she definitely had some years on me, eight or ten at least.
