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It was impossible. Insurmountable. Like she’d somehow accidentally sunk her hand into a concrete block. For a second she truly thought she might have dislocated her own shoulder trying to get away.
And that wasn’t even so wild a thought.
Because he clearly thought the same, the second they were in the car.
He was immediately on her, like he’d accidentally cut her arm off with a chain saw. She had to stop him pulling off her jacket, to check it was still attached to her body. And he kept pressing it, and sayingdoes that hurt, does this hurt, are you all right, can you move it. Then he made her lift it, just to make sure.
Before he finally sat back on his side of the car and sighed.
“I’m sorry. I just really wasn’t expecting you to yank away like that. I didn’t think about it. But I should have done. I should have known,” he said. She didn’t know in what way, however. As far as she could see, she was the one who messed up.
“Why should you? It was silly as heck. I don’t even know why I did it.”
“You did it because I touched you without your say so.”
“But I did say so,” she said. “In the house.”
“No, you never. You said we could go ahead and pretend to be a couple. You didn’t sign off on all the things that might involve. Like me grabbing you when you haven’t told me I can. And now look, you’re injured because of it.”
He gestured at her arm. But he didn’t look at her.
Which was a good thing, too, considering her face was a picture.
Because okay, it was kind of the bare minimum to ask for permission before you touched someone. And also: she’d kind of known he was like this, from various reports of his behavior over the years. He smacked unasked-for hands off butts if other men did it in front of him. It was him who’d gotten Robbie Jenkins booted from the team after stuff surfaced about the women he’d groped.
And even though she’d never read the kiss-and-tells about him, she knew what was in them. She knew that he’d flabbergasted at least two separate women by stopping the second they’d said stop. So it wasn’t a shock.
Yet still somehow it rocked her a bit to hear him spell it out.
It made her heart start beating a bit too hard; suddenly she felt oddly hot.
And she had to take a second before she could say anything. Just in case what she said was something weird and gushing, likeGod, that’s such a cool thing to come out with. Then finally, once she was calm, she spoke. “All right. So why don’t you lay out for me exactly what you might want to do.”
And thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice her voice shook when she did.
He just started at the top of his apparently very practical list.
“Well, you’ve seentake your hand when we go outside.”
“Yep,” she said. “And you should know I’m okay with that from now on.”
“Good, because I reckon that’ll be a convincing one. And I’ve done it before. But there’s also a bunch of little things, probably annoying things, that I can see on you right now and I’d definitely want to do them if we were together.”
Do them, she thought, with a little jolt.
But she was pretty sure he wasn’t trying to say anything sexual.
So she did her best to act like she’d never gotten that impression at all.
“You can see them on me? That sounds ominous.”
“It isn’t. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. I think you’re going to hate it.”
“Just say it then, before it makes my guts churn the last thing I ate into butter,” she said, and she could see he didn’t like that idea. He didn’t enjoy making her nervous. Yet somehow, he couldn’t quite seem to let it out. He still hesitated.
And when he finally broke, it was only to nod at her shoulder.
“Half your collar is tucked into your jacket,” he said.
