Page 55 of Will to Run

“Oh my God, stop,” she laughs. “This is not a sex slave scenario. Plus, I mean, it won’t be anything too crazy.”

“Whatever you concoct, we’ll try,” I say.

She nods as if she’s agreeing with what I’m saying, but there is still something that isn’t sitting right. I can’t put my finger on what it is; she just seems half a step off.

“Like I said, Del, you’re in charge. If you don’t want to move past last night, we don’t,” I offer her the chance to pull out, even though I hope she’s not ready to stop this yet.

“It’s not that. I just… God, I don’t know why this is so hard to say,” she taps her fingers across my chest.

“I know you don’t know me well, but you can trust me. I like to think I’m safe,” I say.

Taking a huge breath, she finally lets it out. “Okay. I know I don’t have the right to ask you this question, and you can tell me to go pound sand. But if we do this, and believe me, I really want to do this…” she pauses and looks around as if she’s searching for the last bit of courage to get out whatever it is she needs to say. “If we do this, can we agree not to be involved with other people? I know it’s a selfish ask for exclusive rights to be sexing you.”

“Sexing me? Is that even a word?” I laugh.

“I don’t know what else to refer to this as… certainly not a sex slave. If at any point you want to stop or have relations with someone else, please let me know. I’m out of here in like five minutes anyway, so no harm, no foul.”

I’m not sure how to respond to her. Because in any other situation, I’d feel like I won the lottery. An opportunity to make every one of this hot-as-fuck woman’s sexual fantasies come true with no strings attached? I’d be the first to sign up to jump into bed with her every day of the week. But I don’t want this to be just about sex. Something deep inside me is screaming to show her what someone should do if they care about her, and that includes taking her out, too. Ideally, that should happen more organically, but that will take time, and we don’t have it.

Bringing my head down closer to hers, I speak. “I rather like the sound of sexing you, and you exclusively, Della. You have my word on that.” I seal that promise with a kiss that somehow lingers too long, but not long enough. “But maybe we do more than hook up?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were things ever good with your ex?”

“No,” her reply is instant.

“Can I ask why you agreed to marry him?”

“I don’t really want to get into it right now, but it comes down to the fact that I killed my mother.”

I wasn’t aware that a jaw could open so wide and so fast that it could fall out of a bed and onto the floor next to it, but mine just did.

What the fuck does she mean? Killed her mother?

“I’m sorry, you can’t drop that line and not get into it.”

“I didn’t physically take her life, but my actions did. I got myself into a situation, and she was coming to get me. She ended up being carjacked a block from where I was, and the person hit her on the head. It ended up killing her.”

I knew her mom died, but that’s not a standard death; that’s a trauma I can’t even wrap my head around. She’s talking about it so matter-of-factly, but I still see the wetness spring in her eyes.

“I’m sure there’s more to the story than that, but what does that have to do with Tripp?” I ask, still not connecting the dots. I hate talking about the ex when we’re lying here together.

“My father disowned me… and that would have been okay. I mean, it wouldn’t have, but I would have understood why. Then one day out of the blue, he came to me and suggested that maybe Tripp and I should get together. My dad and Tripp’s dad were friends. He said that the Worthingtons were looking for a wife for Tripp… that things could be mutually beneficial because I could get them to help save my father’s failing business. He said it would go a long way in making things better between us.”

There’s so much I want to address with that… that I should address… but I can’t stop the first thing that still comes out of my mouth. “But you didn’t love him?”

“I wanted to,” she answers.

“But you didn’t,” I reply. She scoots closer to my body and shakes her head against my chest, but won’t bring her blue eyes to look at me again.

“No. I knew he wasn’t good for me from the beginning, but it was the only time my father would talk to me. The union with Tripp was going to be the penance I accepted for my mother. Because after she died, my father spiraled in a way I never could have predicted. And when he came to me with the Tripp idea, he had life in his eyes again. Hope. Something I had taken away eighteen months prior. I had already lost my mother and had a taste of what losing my father would be like. I didn’t want to lose him forever, too.”

“Oh my God, Della,” I say, wrapping her as tightly as I can. “I’m so sorry.” How does one even respond to that? Whatever is transpiring between us can’t fully be classified as a rebound because she had never been into him. And part of me isn’t mad at that.

“It’s fine,” she starts, “I mean, it’s not. But it is what it is. I guess that’s why I’m okay walking away so quickly. I know it makes me look like a bit of a hoe…”

I cut her off. “If Tripp was the love of your life and you ended up on my ranch, you could still do whatever you wanted to do. I’d still want you… and I still wouldn’t judge you. Have you talked to either of them since you’ve been here?”