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Kick me in the fucking gut, why don’t you.
Sometimes I wondered if I was so drawn to Roe and his honesty because I was the opposite. I was the douchebag who suppressed my emotional baggage and denied parts of my identity. I was a coward. He wasn’t. I was scared to unlock the box rattling with Vegas memories. He faced his fears head on and…
I lied to myself every single day. But if I dropped the act for one moment, at least to myself, I knew very well why I couldn’t give Sandra a chance.
I still wanted to be closer to Roe than what was appropriate. Not necessarily the, uh…more intimate aspects…? Yeah, no. That shit freaked me out. All the while…it was always there. That urge, that need, to take one step closer. To take his hand and squeeze it, to hug him, to hold him, to fall asleep with his head on my shoulder.
He was good at invading my dreams sometimes too.
I was even better at suppressing them.
“Say something.”
I cleared my throat. All right. I was already a pro at bullshit. If he wanted me to give her a chance, I could fake it. Just like I faked everything else. Fucking coward. This was no different from the day after Vegas. Giving Roe an out only meant I was giving myself an out too. Lying to him, for him, allowed me to keep pretending.
“You have my support. If you genuinely want me to give her a shot, I will.”
He smiled unsurely and squeezed my arm.
If I’d been anybody else right now, he would’ve hugged me. That was just Roe. The hugger, the affectionate guy. But because I was me, aloof and generally uncomfortable, he didn’t.
Except, now I really fucking needed it.
Silencing the warning bells that went off, I stood up straighter and hauled him in for a hug. He stiffened for a hot second before he exhaled a chuckle and hugged me back. Yeah, it was fucking tragic. How a simple hug from me could come as a shock.
I called it self-preservation. Maintaining a distance kept certain intrusive thoughts at bay too.
Goddammit.
I tightened my hold on him and prayed I wasn’t too obvious when I buried my nose in his hair. He always smelled so damn good. Felt damn good too.
I closed my eyes and stole the moment.
“Is it Christmas?” he joked.
“Shut up.” I rubbed his upper back and breathed him in as subtly as I possibly could. A guy still had to get air into his lungs, right? Yeah. “I’m still pissed you won’t let me throw you a bachelor party.”
Another lie. I was nothing but relieved.
He laughed softly and stroked my back. “You know what I don’t need? To get plastered right before my wedding.”
Why? We made such awesome choices when we were drunk.
Wait—was that a worry of his? No, it couldn’t be. I’d been the one who’d calmed down with the drinking this summer. It actually felt better. Tipsy was nice. A good feeling. I didn’t wanna get drunk off my ass anymore.
“I have an idea,” he yawned. “Let’s order room service and watch a movie we don’t understand.”
I smiled tiredly and gave him another solid squeeze. Best idea he’d had all day.
*
We ran into the next problem the morning after we’d arrived in Poland. Krakow, more accurately. Another town I would’ve loved to explore.
“What time is it?” Roe asked.
I checked my watch. “Almost noon. Gina should call within the hour.”
Go fucking figure. Something was wrong with our permits, so we’d been delayed half a day. We couldn’t enter the mine until everything was taken care of. In the meantime, we’d invited the topography crew to our hotel room to go over last-minute details. The table in our living room area was littered with documents, blueprints, and laptops.
“Well, if the weather clears up, we could get started with mapping out the topside area,” Charlotte proposed. “We have the drone permit in order, right?”
I nodded. “Just remember the no-fly zone west of the perimeter. Mine property only.”
“Got it.” Charlotte turned to her guys and pulled her iPad out of her backpack.
I moved one of the laptops closer to me and zoomed in on the map of Europe. Rather, what Europe had looked like shortly after the continent had broken apart from Pangea and started drifting toward its current location. That was why we’d traveled to the famous salt mines of southern Poland.
Roe shifted closer to me on the couch and studied the map with a focused look on his face. “So it’s this area right here.” He pointed at the southern part of the country. “Or was it all of Poland?”
“I think it was more than that, but it got compressed over time, and then the ocean here dried out, leaving nothing but salt.” I swiped to the former page where we had the illustration of Pangea breaking apart. “So when it was Pangea, where you have Poland—or future Poland—that was the sea. And nearby areas. It dried out, the continent drifted, we had earthquakes and volcano eruptions, we had the tectonic plates shifting, Africa crashing into Europe…”
