AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Not unless you want to.” He leaned over the table again, his hands reaching out for mine. “Do you want to stop?”
“No,” I admitted, and he grinned again. That damn grin. That damn face. I felt vulnerable with what I’d just said, so I asked him the same question. “Do you want to stop?”
“Never,” he said, and I felt my heart jump.
“Don’t say things like that,” I warned.
“Or what?”
“Or I might fall in love with you for real.”
“But you hate me, remember?” he reminded me, and I swallowed the pinprick of hurt that his response elicited inside of me.
“I did. I mean, I do. I mean, I don’t know anymore.” I threw my head into my hands and closed my eyes for a second, wishing I could take back my words because they made me feel stupid.
He looked like he might spit out his drink. Like what I’d just said about falling in love with him for real was the most horrible thing in the world that could happen. But he was the one who had just said heneverwanted to stop this thing between us.
Why are men so confusing?
“Have you eaten anything today?” he asked, and it only made me more annoyed.
But I thought back on the entirety of the day, and I’d been so stressed out that I wasn’t sure I had.
“I can’t remember,” I answered honestly, and he gave me a look as if my response explained it all.
He waved a hand, and Miss Gorgeous was back, taking his order with a nod before leaving us alone once more.
“Maybe we should talk about that night,” he suggested.
My first response was to argue with him and make him fight for it, but I acquiesced instead.
We needed to get it out in the open. Although I wasn’t sure I’d be able to forgive him again if he still acted the same or defended the version I’d first met.
“Sure. Start talking.”
I waited.
And waited some more.
But Joseph only sat there, staring at me.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You could start with telling me you’re sorry. Did it ever cross your mind to apologize?”
Rearing back, he swallowed a laugh before launching into some diatribe. “Me? Apologize to you? You’re the one who wanted to burn off my manhood. You should be apologizing to me!”
“Iwanted to burn off your manhood?Iwanted to?” I stopped short, my anger grabbing hold of me. I hated that it felt like we’d just taken a million steps backward. “You were the one waving a lighter at your nuts that night. Not me. I took the lighter from you before you lit your damn pants on fire,” I said.
He looked at me like I was a complete lying psychopath instead of the honest-to-God truth-teller that I was being.
“Why the hell would I ever do that?”
“Because you were being a jerk. You said that I was too pretty to be a surgeon. You asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to be a trophy wife instead. You were insulting and degrading, and you wouldn’t stop.”
Joseph looked like I’d struck him. He was clearly processing what I had told him, but he couldn’t seem to wrap his head around it. “How did that turn into a lighter pointed at my balls?”
“You asked me what specialty I was declaring. When I told you that I wanted to work in the burn unit, you grabbed a lighter and threatened to set your dick on fire to see how good I would be at fixing it.”
