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“Are you seriously comparing me to her?” Eleanor said.
“No, but… look, you’re young. You’ll change your mind about wanting kids,” he said dismissively.
Her anger washed over her like a flash flood, drowning everything in its path. “What the fuck, Wes!”
She climbed out of his bed and stalked out of his room. “You asshole.”
He pulled on his jeans and followed her to the guest room, standing in the doorway as she dressed. “Eleanor, all I’m saying is -”
“Don’t,” she said. “I know exactly what you’re saying, Wesley.” To her dismay, tears slid down her cheeks. “I knew I didn’t want kids by the time I was twelve years old. But since the very fucking moment I could physically have them, people have said that shit to me. Alluding that I’m too dumb to know what I want. That no real woman wants a life without kids, and in a few years when I mature, when I settle down with the right fucking man, I’ll finally realize that my life couldn’t possibly be complete without a kid or two.”
She grabbed her overnight bag from the floor and stuffed her phone and her purse into it on top of the neatly folded clothes. “Do you know the only person who ever believed me was my mom? She never thought that I would change my mind. She loved me exactly the way I was. And then she died, and I had no one who understood me or accepted me just as I was.”
She zipped up her bag. “But then I met you and you… you accepted me for who I was too. You didn’t care that I talked all the time, or that I was too blunt, or too awkward, or too… Eleanor. You liked me the way I was. At least I thought you did. But I know better now. You’re no different from the others, Wes. You think I’m stupid.”
“Eleanor, I don’t think you’re stupid,” he said. He purred to her, but she ignored it and threw her bag over her shoulder before grabbing her car keys from the nightstand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that. Where are you going?”
“Back to my house,” she said. “I can’t stay here with you anymore.”
“You can’t leave,” he said. “It isn’t safe for you.”
“It isn’t safe for me here,” she said.
Hurt flooded his face, but she told herself she didn’t care. She couldn’t stay here a minute longer.
“Butterfly, I can’t let you leave,” he said.
She reached into the side pocket of her overnight bag and pulled out the can of Mace, popping the lid off with her thumb and letting her finger hover over the button. “Get out of my way, Wes.”
“Eleanor, you won’t Mace me,” he said.
“The fuck I won’t,” she said. “What you just said to me proves that you don’t know me at all. So, let me be perfectly clear - I will Mace you if you try to stop me from leaving.”
He growled low in his throat, and his pupils turned to slits as he talked to his lion. When he returned to her, she said, “Get out of my way.”
He stepped aside so she could brush past him. “You’re letting your anger get the best of you, Eleanor. You’re making stupid decisions.”
“Well,” she said as she yanked open the front door, “I guess that’s not all that surprising since I’m so young and stupid, right?”
He growled. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said. “It’s written all over your damn face. Goodbye, Wes.”
She walked out of the house, slamming the door behind her and stomping toward her car parked on the street as she shoved the Mace back into the side pocket of her bag.
Eleanor! What are you doing? Stop it right now. Get your ass back into Wes’s house. You really are being so fucking stupid right now.
She muttered a curse but fuck if her inner voice wasn’t right. She was being fucking stupid. Leaving Wes’s house because he’d hurt her feelings was a goddamn too stupid to live move. She’d be damned if she was murdered because Wes thought she was young and dumb and made some shitty comment about the kid thing. Besides, she might not want to admit it, but she’d immediately overblown the situation because she was sensitive about it.
She took a deep breath as she stopped a few feet from her car. Okay, she would go back inside the house, and while she wasn’t quite ready to talk to Wes or even look at him, she could sit in the guest room and sulk like a moody teenager, right? That would absolutely show him just how fucking mature she was.
With another soft curse, she turned and started back toward the house. She’d only taken a step or two when the man stepped out from between the shadows of Wes’s house and his neighbour’s house to the left.
She froze, staring cautiously at the man as he grinned at her. He was the biggest man she’d ever seen with dark blue eyes, thick blond hair that hung in a tangled mess down his back, and a bushy blond beard sprouting on his jaw like an alpaca in desperate need of a grooming.
His massive body took a few steps closer. His neck was almost non-existent, hidden beneath the heavy muscles that rose above his shoulders. His arms were thick with corded muscle, and he had thighs so wide they needed their own damn zip code.
