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“It’s special honey.”
“I guess so.”
“I get a lot of repeat customers.”
“I’m sure you know what you’re doing, then.”
But the set of her mouth told him she didn’t believe it. He made a mental note to try to change her mind later on. After he got her dry.
When he finally found the cracked jar and lifted it out of the box, she was staring into her soup bowl, stirring around a chunk of potato with her plastic spoon.
“You have a game plan?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Like I said. I can change the ticket online and do it all over again. Or I could take a bus home.”
“You’re not taking the fucking bus. Are you kidding? Have you ever been on a bus going cross-country?”
“They can’t be that bad.”
“Yeah. They can.”
He squatted down next to her, trying to read her reluctance and make all the impulses inside him align with whatever it was she wanted him to do.
Trying to ignore his gut, which was telling him to keep her here, whatever it took.
He couldn’t go by what his gut told him. His gut was a Neanderthal. All it wanted was to eat and fuck and win at things. If he wanted May to stay, he had to figure out what someone else would do in this situation. Someone with better instincts.
Don’t put your arm around her.
He braced his palm against the back of her chair. “You thinking about going back to Thor?”
“No way.”
There was anger in her voice. Buried hurt.
Ben needed to see her expression, so he reached over and tipped her chin up with one finger.
There it was. Those eyes, just like they’d been at Pulvermacher’s. Full of sharp intelligence and fury.
She bottled everything up. You had to pay close attention to see the signs—how quiet she got when she was well and truly upset. How cheerful she acted in the face of a disaster that was gutting her.
What would it take to get her to let go? To uncork that bottle and say what she really felt?
He wondered why he needed to find out.
“You know what I think?” he asked. Because he had no fucking idea what someone else would say in this situation.
“What?”
“I think maybe you’re not in a big hurry to get up to that cabin and have to explain yourself to a bunch of busybody family members.”
“You do, huh?”
“I think you’re not the kind of person who ordinarily forks quarterbacks, so they’re all going to want to know what happened, and you don’t feel like talking about it yet.”
She gave him a little smile. “You might be right.”
“I think you need a vacation.”
