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“What am I supposed to think? I know about all the girls you went through in college, Owen.”
My hackles instantly rise.
Sure, I dated a few girls in college and even had a couple of one-night stands, but I wasn’t the notorious manwhore that the gossipmongers of this town made me out to be.
I was a young single guy making the best of his college years and having fun, and I never hooked up with a girl who didn’t know the score. And I sure as hell will not be made to feel bad over sowing my wild oats.
“I was in college!” I snap in frustration over the fact that this town thinks it’s their right to broadcast my every move. “I was having fun, and not only was it no one’s damn business, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as what everyone made out.”
She looks away and takes a moment to actively collect her thoughts before looking back at me with a vulnerability that punches me straight in the gut. “I can’t be one of those girls, Owen. I can’t be a one-night stand or someone’s booty call.”
“That’s not what I want.”
She runs a hand over her brow and releases a deep sigh before splaying her hands in question. “Then what do you want?”
Everything.
I want to fight with her and make love to her. I want to take her on a date and show everyone she’s mine. I want to get down on one knee one day and ask her to be my wife. I want to hold her hand when she brings our children into this world, and I want to come home to the sounds of her laughter filling my home every day. I want it all and only want it with her. I always have, even when I was too stupid to realize it.
But as she stands staring back at me with a mixture of fear, vulnerability, and confusion overwhelming her features, I feel like I’m balancing precariously on a tightrope. And any wrong movement on my part could send me plummeting to my doom. If I lay my heart out on the line right now, it may just scare her off. So opting to play it safe, I decide to ease her into the possibility of more.
“I don’t know.” I shrug my shoulders, feigning nonchalance. “Maybe we could try going out on a date or something?”
“A date?” Her eyebrows lift in bewilderment. “Are you kidding? We would kill each other.”
“That’s being a tad dramatic, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t,” she replies, planting her hands on her hips. “You’ve been nothing but a total jerk to me my whole life.”
“Hey, you gave it back just as good,” I fire back.
While I will admit things may have gotten out of hand sometimes, I refuse to take the brunt of everything. She gave as good as she got and never hesitated to retaliate by any means possible.
“Because I had to. You wouldn’t let up!” She throws her hands up in the air. “I’m lucky I even managed to pass eleventh-grade math because of you.”
“That was in high school. We all did stupid shit back then.”
“And what about now, huh?” She gives me a pointed look. “You sent me lavender on Valentine’s Day when I’m allergic.”
“I didn’t know that. And what about what you did with Violet and the flowers, huh?”
“I did that because you left me locked in that damn storage closet for fifteen minutes,” she snaps, pointing her finger at me.
“And I only did that because you put glitter in my ball cap!” I snap too, pointing a finger back. “I was still finding traces of it in my hair weeks later.”
“That was to get you back for sticking an ‘Out of Order’ sign on my back! I worked nearly a whole shift with the entire town laughing behind my back until Rita Monroe was kind enough to point it out to me.”
The recollection has a smile tugging at my lips, but I bite them together to ward it off. Mac was all out of sorts that day—why exactly, I’m not sure—so I stuck an ‘Out of Order’ sign on her back when she was momentarily distracted. Everyone thought it hilarious because it fit perfectly with how badly she was screwing everything up. It also squashed the annoyance of all the customers who had been given the wrong meals.
“Well, you were out of order that day, and it’s not my fault the town thought it was funny too,” I retort, and her eyes narrow into harsh slits, making me want to punch myself in the head so hard that it knocks some sense into my brain.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I seem to have no filter when it comes to her and just blurt out the first stupid thing that pops into my mind. And of all the times to have a bad case of word vomit, this is the absolute worst.
“This is exactly what I mean,” she mutters, shaking her head at me. “Everything is a joke to you. Is what happened between us just now nothing but a joke too?”
I rake my fingers through my hair in frustration over how fast this conversation has spiraled out of control and how I have no clue how to fucking save it. “No, of course not.”
