Page 48 of Rescuing Mary

“Thanks.”

“Tell me more,” he demanded.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know…everything. You probably know all there is to know about me, and I don’t know anything about you.”

“I don’t know all that much about you,” Mary mumbled and picked at the label on her beer bottle.

Without thought, Truck reached out and lifted her chin so she had to look at him. The second his finger touched her skin, he felt a jolt of…something. Her skin was soft, and he wanted to palm her cheek in his large hand but he refrained. Barely. “Why?”

She shrugged. “Our relationship has been…complicated.”

“Were we dating?”

“Sort of.”

Truck didn’t like the ambiguous answer, but forged onward. This was more information than he’d gotten from his friends in the last week, and he didn’t want to make her clam up. He was desperate to hear more about his missing three years. “So…complicated?”

She gave him a half grin. “Yeah. Very.”

“Okay, so we get to know each other now. We can start new. A blank slate, so to speak.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Why?”

She was a prickly thing. Truck liked it. “Because. I want to get to know you…again. You said things were complicated, so let’s make them uncomplicated.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” Mary said a little defensively.

Again, her honesty was refreshing. “Good, because I don’t want a one-night stand,” he shot back. “Look. I get that this is weird for you. But it’s even stranger for me. I have no idea what ‘complicated’ means. Were we in an open relationship where we could both sleep with others? Do we like ménages? Maybe we’re married and you’ve got our twelve kids stashed away somewhere. I just don’t know.”

He noticed the way Mary paled, but continued, “But I do know that I’m drawn to you. I don’t need protecting, never have, but hearing you stand up for me back there,” he motioned to the restroom hallway with his head, “both aroused and fascinated me. It also made me yearn to get to know you. You’re literally the first person who’s admitted we had some kind of relationship before I lost my memory. I’m flying blind here, and you’re going to have to tell me if ‘complicated’ can be overcome, or if starting over with me from scratch is too much for you.”

“It’s not too much for me,” Mary said immediately.

Truck breathed out a sigh of relief. “So, we’ll start fresh. I’ll be as open as I can with you, more open than I obviously was before, and I can get to know you all over again as well. I’m not promising anything other than friendship for now. I’m attracted to you, Mary, I won’t lie about that, but until I either remember or someone tells me everything about my life that I’m missing from the last three years, I can’t commit to anything serious or long term.”

“I can live with that,” Mary said. “But you should know…I like you too. We may have been complicated, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t care a great deal for you. I wasn’t always the best at showing you, for lots of reasons, but I’m going to try harder this time. I can’t exactly turn off my feelings because you don’t remember.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Truck was more impressed with her now than he was before. It couldn’t have been easy for her to admit that.

“I can live with that,” he echoed.

Just then, someone jostled Mary from behind, making her knock over the bottle of beer she’d been drinking. Luckily, it tipped away from her and spilled over the back side of the bar instead of all over her.

Truck looked around and realized that the bar had gotten a lot more crowded since they’d sat down. He saw Ghost and the others, no longer playing darts but sitting at a table in the corner with four women, including the one who had been at the restaurant with Mary.

He should’ve guessed. None of the guys had been the least bit interested in checking out the women at the bar like they used to. Some Special Forces soldier he was. He should’ve known they had girlfriends.

Suddenly feeling sick that his friends hadn’t told him they’d found women, Truck wanted to get away from their prying eyes. Wanted nothing more than peace and quiet.

He turned back to Mary. “Want to get out of here?”

“Yes,” she said immediately, not taking her eyes from his.