Page 34 of Slow Hands Cowboy

Oh yes. She was thinking far too small. He knew exactly what to do in this situation. He did it. He hadn’t considered this before, but now… Yes, now he was starting to get the big picture. Fake dating was all well and good, and he was happy to have even that, but they could make it something that captured people’s imagination.

And by the time they dissolved it all, people would’ve moved on. It would be a footnote.

Something that people had to google in the coming years. Whatever happened to that couple where the bride got jilted at the altar and she dated the guy who stopped him…

And no one would remember enough details to even look them up. Because at the end of the day, they weren’t public figures.

They were just unwittingly pop culture’s new fascination, and when those kinds of things happened nobody cared about reality.

What they cared about was the version of events that made them happiest. They were going to go creating stories with or without him and Addison participating. So they might as well take control of that narrative.

Big time.

“We can’t wait. We have to jump on it now. We need to make a plan. We need to make the timeline look clean.”

“Fuck planning. This can’t be something that we plan.”

His heart was beating just a little bit faster, and he moved closer to her in spite of his better judgment. This was the problem with being a man who generally didn’t heed better judgment of any kind. “It has to be passionate.”

“But…”

“It has to be,” he said. “Your groom ran off, leaving you there all alone. I swept you up out of the aisle, and then I took you back here, and we had the best sex of your life.”

He wished he could be neutral. He wished that his heart were harder. He wished that his whole body didn’t feel tense, that the desire that he had felt for Addison from the time he was fifteen years old wasn’t cumulative inside of his system, building up more and more now, making him feel like he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, because he was supposed to be antagonizing her and helping her at the same time, a complex balance, but one Walker was uniquely suited to.

He was not supposed to be antagonizing himself, and he was not supposed to be putting himself in a position where he was pining for her again.

Now.

He knew what it was. Now, he was old enough to know exactly what all these feelings were. It wasn’t half so romantic, impossible, or complex as young Walker would’ve liked to believe.

It was his first experience with absolutely debilitating lust.

And hell, he couldn’t lie, it was debilitating now. But at least now he knew what he really wanted was to fuck her until neither of them could breathe. That hurt a lot less than feeling like he wasn’t seen by somebody that he had feelings for.

She never needed to see him. That was just fine.

But someday, he realized, standing there with fire running through his veins, and a need so sharp inside of him that he felt like it was going to cut him into pieces, he really wanted to touch her. Before he left this world, he wanted to touch Addison Carey, and he could be patient, he had been patient enough up until this moment. But yeah, he still wanted it. Down to the soles of his boots, down to whatever soul he had left inside of his body.

Fuck.

She was bright red, and she had moved away from him, just a fraction of a step, but she was definitely not entirely comfortable with his speech. Fair enough. He wasn’t comfortable either. His jeans were getting tight.

“I can’t do that,” she said.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because everybody is waiting for me to be that person, don’t you see?”

“I don’t, Addison. I don’t think anyone was waiting for you to do anything, except to have your wedding, and now, you have a whole bunch of people who don’t know who you are at all, that are waiting to see, I guess, what you do next. But I don’t think anyone is waiting for… What exactly do you think they’re waiting for?”

“For me to prove that I’m like my mother.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Do tell.”

“I just… You know, she ran away with the gardener.”

Was that even salacious? Not in his world. His mom had certainly had a reputation – three kids out of wedlock with no father confirmed. Her parents had gotten divorced. It might have been a little scandalous at the time, but surely no one was actually sitting there, rubbing their hands together waiting to see if she’d run off with the —