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Iz practically tosses the menus out of the room to get the woman moving faster, and as soon as the door closes, she turns back to me with serious eyes. “Help me understand.”
“Understand… Understand what?”
“Why you didn’t want me. I was there all along, but you didn’t want me.”
I groan with frustration. “Bubs, I always wanted you.Always.”
“So then I don’t understand why it took so long. Damn Jimmy, I pined after you like a little puppy for most of my life. Why didn’t you kiss me again?”
“Well, at first it was because you were six, right? Then when you were old enough that it would be reasonably okay to kiss you again, you started to get boobs and an ass, and well, by that point, you were unreachable for me. To the world, you were my baby sister. Our brothers would’ve killed me. Jon would’ve peeled the skin from my bones.” I tip my beer toward her. “And you sure as hell didn’t look like a pining puppy to me. You were a badass on the fighting circuit. You were kicking ass and, I thought, had put me firmly in the friend zone. I didn’t want to ruin what we had by bringing it up, in case you didn’t feel the same.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah, I am,” I admit with a smile. “Then by the time I figured I didn’t care what everyone else thought, by the time I was all in, well, I still needed to make money. I needed to be able to take care of you.”
When her eyes turn to angry slits, I raise my hand in surrender. “I know you’re not about that, butIam. I needed to be able to take care of you. As a man, a Kincaid, I needed to take care of you. So then,” I blow out a deep breath. “Then I got the money. I trained hard, won the belt, bought you a ring and a house; I got everything else ready, but at that point, you were still like, sixteen years old. I wasn’t asking a teenager to marry me.” I shake my head. “No way was I asking you to settle so young. I’d have died if you’d realized a few years later that you regretted it. So I was gonna let you live your life. I’d live it with you. And when you weren’t a baby anymore, when you were ready, I would’ve asked.”
Her deep brown eyes turn unbearably sad. “So much waiting. So much wasted time.”
“I know.” I scoff at the irony. “It felt like an eternity.”
She nods and goes to work on her nail. “Can I ask you something personal?”
“Sure.” I place my beer down and give her my full attention. “You can ask me anything.”
“How many other… um.” She hesitates. “Who else have you been with?”
Anything, except that.I groan and drop my head back.
“That bad, oh my God.” One finger in her ear, the other hand waving me off before I shout about all of my conquests, she shakes her head. “No. Don’t tell me. It’s best if I don’t know.”
“No, Bubs, relax. It’s not like that.”
“No, I changed my mind. I really don’t want to know.”
“Can you stop freaking out for a second!” My snapped words have her eyes shooting to mine. I’m not mad, especially not at her. Mostly I’m just humiliated. “There’s something you don’t know about me.”
“Oh my God. That sounds so ominous. Is my life about to change? Were you secretly part of an underground sex club? Do you have STD’s? Oh my God, do you have weird fetishes? What have the other girls done for you that I don’t even know about? I might not know those moves, Jimmy!”
“Here you go.” Our plates are set down in front of us ever so discreetly, and when the waitress smiles blandly, but her eyes dance with dollar signs, she walks out as silently as she walked in.
Iz covers her burning face with the cloth napkin. “I’m so sorry.” She peeks out from behind the napkin. “I can’t believe I just outed your lifestyle in front of a stranger.”
I snort and press my palms into my eyes sockets. “Jesus, Bubs. We’re gonna be in the papers tomorrow. You know that, right?”
“I’m so sorry!”
“Eat your dinner, then we’ll talk. But I promise, no STD’s.”
“But you aren’t denying the sex club,” she whispers. “Do I need to learn new knots?”
I chuckle. She’s absurd. “I promise, no sex clubs, either.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Why would I be?”
“Because she just overheard–”
