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“Your way of convincing me to hang out with you is free rent? What am I? Vivian inPretty Woman?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Is there a better way to say it?”
“It’s different. Dude got laid in that movie. Doubt our night will end up with me screwing you on an expensive-ass piano.”
“Don’t hold your breath on that happening. You’re amarriedman.” Yep, my selfish ass still can’t let that go.
“I’m adivorcedman, sweetheart. We were married for five years, three of which were hell.”
Five years?
His marriage wasn’t a temporary thing or a favor. You can’t be with someone for half of a decade and not have feelings for them. It just doesn’t happen.
“Doesn’t matter if it was for a day. You can’t keep throwing theI ruined your lifebullshit in my face. You found love. You had a wife.” I throw my arms up. “Hell, you might have kids. Any Gage Juniors running around that I should know about?”
The mood in the truck shifts, as if a surprise storm suddenly rolled over us with the clench of his jaw. Instead of his fingers tapping to the beat, they’re now biting into the steering wheel.
“Nope, no kids,” he grits out.
I’d hand him water if I didn’t think he’d throw it out the window with enough force to split the street. My question cut out a grim memory lodged inside him.
Were he and his wife unsuccessful in having a baby?
“What did I just open up there?” I ask, the words falling from my mouth slowly and carefully—a skill I mastered in nursing school for better communication with patients.
“Nothing,” he snaps. His attention is on the road, as if he were waiting for something to run out in front of us.
“Okay,” I draw out.
Don’t push him. Don’t try to get back in.
I went into nursing because I wanted to heal and help people.
The problem is, Gage is a lost cause because he doesn’t want either from me.
“I don’t have to go to dinner,” I say. “Tell Nancy I’ll visit her sometime this week.”
“We’re both going.”
“Why? You look like you’d rather have your toenails ripped off than have dinner with me.”
“It’s not you, I fucking swear it.” He pauses to take in a few breaths and calms himself. “If anything, you’ll be the only person capable of pulling me out of this funk, so I don’t walk into that dinner and act like a miserable dick.”
“All right.”
There’s a new level of pain powering through this gorgeous, tattered man. That teenage boy I fell in love with years ago has been replaced by someone darker. I’ll take responsibility for some of that pain, but something else had ripped him apart harder than I had.
Whatever it is, it’s something he doesn’t want to have come out because it’ll bring him to his knees. He needs someone to keep him standing, and I was thrown into his space just in time. No matter how shattered our relationship is, I’ll never let him hurt alone.
Everything happens for a reason.
People can redeem themselves.
My redemption for breaking his heart will be helping him get through this dark time.
I shift around in my seat. “I am pretty hungry.”
