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"Really? I would have pegged it for daddy."
"Why's that?"
"Because, cupcake, you have 'daddy issues' written all over you."
"What? I do not!" I so, so did.
"Sure you do. It's why you clung so tight to my old man. It's why you feel like you need to keep a firm grip on what's going on with us."
"There is nothing going on with us," I objected.
"See? Right there," he smiled. "You know there's something here," he said, gesturing at the air between us. "And that scares the shit out of you so you try to be snippy and pick fights. It's easier for you to be angry with me, even if it is a superficial anger based on nothing, than admit that you want me."
"You think really highly of yourself," I said, clinging to the only part of his sentence that I could.
"Look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong," he pressed.
My eyes raised defiantly to his and my mouth opened, but I couldn't push the words out. I wasn't a great liar, and that was exactly what I would be doing if I told him he was wrong.
Oh, hell. I was in for it.FourShooterI had her.
It was right there in her sleepy eyes looking suddenly wide; her mouth parted slightly with no sound coming out. I wasn't lying when I walked into her apartment and told her I got her. I did. She was covered in thorns she wore like a shield to keep anyone from seeing what was underneath: a woman who was soft and sweet enough to paint her living room walls a pastel purple and kept a small collection of intricate snow globes on display in a place of honor. She was so scared of anyone seeing that, of understanding her that she hadn't seemed to have made any connections in the town except with my father. No one smiled and greeted her as we walked down the street; no one in the diner waved at her as we walked in. She was an outsider. And I knew these people well enough to know they would have accepted her if she put the effort in; so it only stood to reason that she never tried. She kept everyone at a distance.
Except Pops.
Normal women her age didn't make friends with their past-middle aged drunken neighbors. Normal women her age would find the idea creepy, would assume that the only reason a man like that would help fix her shower thingy would be because they wanted in her pants. And judging by the way she looked taken back when I implied she belonged to my old man suggested the idea of such a thing had never even crossed her mind.
Fucking daddy issues.
There were many types of daddy issues. There were the girls who sought the love they never got from their fathers in every man who crossed their paths. They were the type to fall into bed with you after you called them pretty and told them they had so much potential in life. But Amelia was not that kind. Amelia was the kind who saw men as raging rivers and she knew that if she wasn't a strong swimmer, she would never be able to keep her head above water. So she kept men she thought of as a threat at a distance by attempting to be as nasty as possible. And, to her, I was a flashing warning sign.
The problem was, I wasn't so easy to shut down. And I was fucking interested. She was different. I'd known a lot of women back home. I enjoyed every sort from the fun-loving party girls always out to give a fuck to the wallflowers who could barely look me in the eye for the first couple hours. Professionally, I worked with the baddest bitches on the East coast, each one of them strong as steel. Not one of them had been able to keep kicking me back into my place the way the raven-haired, brown-eyed bombshell spitfire across the table from me could. I liked that. I was intrigued by that.
Alright. So maybe I was just looking for a distraction. I was itching to get the hell out of this place since my tires crossed into town the day before. From one town line to the other, I had nothing but bad memories. Every inch of the place was shrouded with the ghosts of my past. Every person looked at me and knew who I used to be. They all knew about the bruises that used to line my forearms. They all knew the look of my ribs sticking out of my torso. They all remembered the fights I used to pick as a young teen, misplaced anger swirling around me like poison, making me slam my fists into anyone who dared look at me the wrong way.
It was the worst possible feeling for someone who spent his life making sure no one knew about his past. I had gotten good at almost convincing myself I wasn't Johnnie Walker Allen anymore. I was just Shooter. I was a man with a gun and a steady trigger finger. I was the guy you went out for beer with who left with the hottest chick in the room. I was someone too laid-back and reckless for things like regrets and sore spots.
Being in my home town stripped away everything I had believed about myself.
And analyzing Amelia was an easy way for me to not have to turn that lens on myself.
Now add in the fact that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life, yeah, I was interested.
Hell, I wanted to spend more time with her enough to actually fucking agree to stay for my father's funeral. That was two more days. Considering I had every intention of being on a plane back to Navesink Bank right that moment, that was a pretty big deal. Now if only I could get her to the point where she wasn't constantly trying to keep me at a distance, that would be great.
