“I just don’t see why you couldn’t have kept it on before?—”
Aha!There it is.
I reached for the pile of clothes, quickly pulling on my bra. When I grabbed my dress, I was met with the faint stench of day-old vomit.
Fucking fantastic.
It didn’t matter. I’d just have to cowgirl the fuck up and wear it home. There was no way I was going to ask for his shirt back.
As I turned around, I realized I probably looked like a mess. I certainly felt like one. Even if I hadn’t looked in a mirror, I could still feel remnants of last night’s makeup dried to my skin—though I had the briefest memory of him gently trying to get it off before I passed out.
“Where’s my phone and purse?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. His eyes dropped, taking in the swell of my breasts as he sucked in a deep breath.
Bishop hesitated for a moment before motioning toward the living room. “By the door on the hook.”
“Well, you were certainly ready to kick me out, weren’t you?” I asked, storming past him.
“Lennox, goddammit, can you wait for just one second?” I could feel him at my back when I reached for my purse. I did a quick check, just making sure everything was inside. Phone, wallet, keys, taser—the usuals.
Thank God. I’d rather die than come back to this cabin.
“I don’t think there’s much point in that, do you? What’sthere to talk about? Do you want to insult me some more?” I spun around, nearly knocked off balance by how close he was.
Bishop ran his hands through his hair, tugging slightly on the ends. I waited for him to say something—to say anything, really—but was met with silence yet again.
I shook my head. “That’s what I thought. Enjoy the solitude, Bishop. Hope it’s worth it.”
lennox
. . .
I hadn’t been lyingwhen I told Bishop I was stewing since the moment I woke up. I’d spent the damn day in a silent rage, throwing myself into work. The entire house was spotless, cleaned from top to bottom—even my own bedroom, which I don’t think had ever been that organized.
When my parents got home from their doctor’s appointments, they didn’t recognize the house. Because they knew me as well as they did, they immediately launched an inquisition about what was wrong.
“Did someone get hurt? Are you fighting with one of your sisters?” It wasn’t until my Dad hit the nail on the head with, “Whose ass am I kicking for breaking your heart?” that I felt my bravado slip just a hair.
But instead of breaking down and telling my Dad that I was an idiot who’d foolishly opened her heart, I cracked a joke about my Adderall hitting hard and how I didn’t want to let it go to waste. His raised brow told me he didn’t believe me, but it was enough to stop the questioning.
When I finally trudged to my room and flopped down on my bed, I was so exhausted that I hoped to fall asleep quickly. Butno. Of course, that would be too easy. Instead, I stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling until I finally let myself cry.
I wasn’t much of a crier. Never had been. That’d been more Josie’s reactionary emotion while I was the hothead of the family. I’d been known to cuss and fight and break things in a fit of anger—all of which I’d been working on in therapy since I was a kid, but things still slipped.
The tears flowed and flowed until I worried they wouldn’t stop. They matched the torrential downpour outside. I hated the way my chest ached. How I vividly recalled the immediate sensation of rejection when I woke up alone this morning.
But the sadness quickly gave way to anger, and before I knew it, I was storming out of the house, hopping in my truck, and driving through the storm until I reached Bishop’s cabin. I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I just reacted.
I didn’t know what I expected from my little temper tantrum, but it sure wasn’t this.
Bishop wound his fingers through my hair, pulling me to him like he’d been drowning, and I was a breath of fresh air he desperately needed. Our mouths moved against one another, tongues sweeping in and claiming. He nipped at my lip, drawing it out as he pulled back to rest his forehead against mine.
“I’m scared,” he whispered, green eyes brimmed with silver. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be the partner you want—the one you deserve—because I have been on my own for so long, but goddammit, I wanna try if you’ll let me.”
He kissed me again, softer this time, but I felt just as much heat behind it. I felt his conviction, his earnest words, and his tender truths. We were both a mess, but we could be a mess together.
Maybe we could make something new, something tangible, something absolutely fucking epic.
“You can’t keep doing this to me, Bishop. You can’t keepbeing so hot and cold. You can’t keep things to yourself or make decisions on your own that concern me as well, because you will lose me if you do. You’ll lose whatever this is or could be,” I mumbled against his lips.
