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It made her want to hide. Conceal all those raw feelings.
But they were right out in the open, and she was naked, and when it came right down to it, she didn’t really know how to hide.
But he did. And she could sense that he was doing it now. And she wanted to break through that wall; she just didn’t know how. And anyway, right now the idea scared her.
Because of what he might do.
If she pushed him...
She wasn’t afraid of him physically, but emotionally... Yeah, that was scary.
“Right. Well.”
“I just like you a lot,” she said.
And he laughed. “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me.”
That made her stomach go hollow. He might be laughing, but she didn’t find it amusing at all.
“Well, then they’re mean.”
“You’re something else.”
“I try. Or, maybe I don’t. My family is not exactly known for its restraint. I can’t claim to be unique among my sisters. Though, they expressed their strong personalities in slightly different ways.”
“Definitely a different experience than growing up at the McCloud house, which was all testosterone.”
And they sat there with the reality of that. That her house had been entirely feminine, especially after her dad had left, and he had lost his mother, and had ended up with all men.
“Do you suppose that’s what drove my dad away? All those girls?”
“I suspect that your dad’s own issues drove him away.”
And he said nothing for a long moment. And she didn’t want to say anything about his mother, because she knew full well why she had left. Because of his father. Because he’d been dangerous and frightening, and it was difficult to blame any woman for leaving him. Except she left her sons, and that was the thing that Alaina would never understand. She’d left Gus. And then he’d been burned. And that...that just about destroyed her. She wondered if it destroyed him too. And knew that she couldn’t ask that. Because she could feel the walls.
He was so good at pretending there weren’t any. But she knew that there were. Because when he told her the story of what had happened to him, and confessed that he never told it, she’d known. Because it became clear the more time she spent with him, that every bit of his lay-it-all-out-there kind of demeanor wasn’t strictly the truth.
And she wondered how much more he had hidden down in there.
But also knew that if she pushed him now he would push back. And it wouldn’t be any fun for her.
“What kind of baby names do you like?” she asked, elbowing him and reaching into the picnic basket and grabbing a carrot stick. She crunched it. It was not a chip. And she was a little bit sad about that, but she appreciated that Violet was trying to be healthy. It was just that Alaina didn’t much care for that one way or the other.
“I don’t...think that I should be responsible for naming another human being.”
“Why not?”
“I have never thought about it in my entire life.”
“Oh, I did. I had baby names written down in my diary from the time I was fourteen.”
“You said you didn’t even know if you wanted kids.”
“Well, no, I didn’t, but I really liked to kind of dream about that future. That perfect one. That would have kids and a husband and all of that. And I may have cut out a picture of a wedding dress or ten too and put them in the journal.”
“Wow.”
“You didn’t have a diary, Gus?”
