I'd been seconds away from giving in, from throwing myself into his arms and telling him that I was sorry for being such a jerk.
In a last ditch effort to keep him from getting too close, I'd told him I wanted to know more about him, knowing that he wouldn't want to give me that information.
He never talked about himself. In fact, he went out of his way to not talk about himself. He didn't like his mother. He wasn't very close to his father. The minute any of them came up, he turned and walked away so he wouldn't have to talk about them.
I'd seen him do it to no less than ten people in the last couple of weeks. And when I'd tried to broach that topic while he was seeing me strictly as a patient, he'd skirted the issue, and downright shut it down, unwilling to talk about it.
Now, though? He didn't once hesitate to talk about it.
Dammit!
"Are you sure that you don't want to ask about my sister? About my time in the Marines when I was deployed?" He paused. "Most of it you already know. When I was talking to you at your office in the beginning, I wasn't doing it as your patient. I was doing it as the man who was falling in love with you. As the man who's been in love with you since way before he ever should have had feelings for you."
And the last of my misgivings melted away.
My eyes went to the corner of the room.
I looked at the innocent looking toy that I'd had for years.
Well, it wasn't innocent to me.
My dad gave it to me as a reminder.
I was never smart enough to solve it, and when I got frustrated and tried to break it, my father had taken my birthday present back.
"My dad thought I was stupid."
He didn't say anything.
"If I give you my heart," I said, walking over to the toy and picking it up. "You better take care of it."
His eyes went to the toy that I'd dragged my finger across, then to me.
"He laughed at me when I couldn't figure this out," I said. "He gave it to me for my birthday. He'd said he'd ran out of time to get me a present, and had seen this at the dollar store."
It still had the hundred-dollar bill in it.
Every once in a while, I picked it up and tried to solve it, but I never could.
"I try to solve this every couple of weeks. Have been steadily doing it since I got it from him," I said, turning and handing it to him. "He laughed at me when he found out that I couldn't do it."
He took the innocent toy, looked at my face, and then down at the puzzle.
Then he stood up, dropped the toy to the floor, and slammed his booted foot down onto it.
The puzzle smashed into a hundred tiny pieces.
I gasped.
"Your father doesn't have control of you anymore," he said. "And I never had the patience for those, either."
I started to laugh.
He watched me for a few long moments, and then took two long steps toward me.
The next thing I knew, I was on my back in the bed, all my carefully folded clothes scattering to the sides and the floor.
His mouth slammed down onto mine, and he growled.
"Your dad is a fucking asshole," he said. "He probably laughed because he thought it was funny, but it wasn't. It was a shit thing to do, and the moment that he saw that it was frustrating you, he should've done something to help, not made it worse by laughing."
I agreed, wholeheartedly.
I was a psychologist. I knew that I should be practicing the same thing I preached.
But when it came to my father and all the crap he'd put me through over the years, it was hard to separate myself from the little girl I once used to be.
But before I could tell him anything more, he pushed my shirt up and over my head, and pressed a single chaste kiss to the base of my throat.
"I want to fuck you."
My belly clenched.
"I want to show you that I'm not a bad guy."
I closed my eyes.
Which meant I missed him when he stood up and pulled my shirt down as if he was never between my legs.
"But I'm going to give you tonight, and most of tomorrow to think about what we've talked about today."
My eyes flashed open.
"And tomorrow when I come by, we'll finish where we left off."
Then he was gone, and I was left staring at what remained of the puzzle that I'd stared at for nearly half my life. Only this time its shattered remains didn't fill me with a sense of unease.
And I found that by breaking that, Tate had somehow set something free inside of me, leaving me with hope that maybe he could set other things free, too.
Chapter 21
Never ask a woman who is eating ice cream straight from the carton how she's doing.
-Hennessy to Tate
Hennessy
I was avoiding the man like the plague.
First, it was because I'd thought that he'd gotten someone pregnant within days of sleeping with me. Then it was because I thought he had a dying child with his old girlfriend.
Now? Well, now I was avoiding him because I was embarrassed. Oh, and let's not forget the guilty feeling that was practically eating a hole through my chest.
My father had slept with his girlfriend while they were still technically ‘together.' He'd gotten her pregnant. Then, the icing on top, he'd refused to have anything to do with the child because he didn't want anyone to know that he wasn't still worshipping at his dead wife's feet, despite the fact that we all-Tate, Ariya, Krisney and I-thought that he was a horny toad that did anything with legs.
I'd gone to bed last night thinking that I was doing okay.
Then, as I'd gotten comfortable thinking about Tate, my mind had wandered.
At first it'd been fairly innocent. I'd been happy to know that he was willing to take a chance on us. I'd been thinking about the future, and what that would mean for us.
The town, I was thinking, might have a lot to say about us.
My father being who my father was meant that I garnered a lot of attention, even when I didn't want to. And Tate being who he was, well that meant that there'd be a whole lot of gossip coming at us twofold. Pairing us together, though? Well, that was just a disaster in the making, I was quickly realizing.
For example, the woman standing in front of me, staring at what I now knew was a hickey.
"That's not something that I would think a woman of your position should be showing in public," Maria Sandoval, one of my father's sheep, murmured under her breath at me. "You're at the grocery store where little kids can see you. I seriously don't see how you thought that was okay."
At first, I hadn't been aware of what she was talking about.
It being Saturday, I'd brushed my teeth, put on my favorite pair of leggings, and a tank top. Once I'd had my hair up in a messy bun on top of my head, I'd headed out the door to have coffee and pancakes with Krisney. I'd promised her that we'd go today since I'd walked out on her yesterday, especially since I was still expected to go to my father's service tomorrow or all hell would break loose.
I'd just wanted to stop at the store for some bread for later when Maria had started to question me.
She kept looking at my neck like it was disgusting her, so I'd moved to the mirror across the aisle that was made to look at yourself while you tried on the glasses in the display, and saw the damning evidence.
"Look," I said. "It's seven in the morning. There aren't any kids here. The only person here is you, and that's because you work here. I think it's time to take a step back, let me get my bread, and butt out of my business."
Maria snorted.
"I think that you have a certain obligation to the public seeing as who your father is. I certainly don't see how it's a good idea for you to be seen with that man," she continued as if I hadn't said a single word. "He's a bad influence on you. You would've never missed Sunday school before him."
I gritted my teeth.
"And you most certainly wouldn't be looking at this kind of stuff." She indicated the wall behind me.
I hadn't actually meant to come to this section when I'd entered the store. At first, I'd just gone down an aisle, thinking to use it to cut to the bread that was at the back right corner of the store.
But something purple had caught my eye, and I'd stopped in front of the biggest selection of lube, condoms, and other intimate products that I'd ever seen in a store.
I must've cut down the same aisle at least a dozen times before, but not once had I given it more than just a cursory glance.
This time? Well, this time I had gotten my curiosity peaked, and I'd stopped in front of the display and picked up the purple bottle that had caught my eye.
It was KY Jelly, Hers and Mine. One bottle was bright purple and said it was warming. The other was said to be cooling.
I'd been reading the label when Maria had walked up.
She'd taken one look at the bottle in my hand, and the hickey as well as beard burn on my neck and chin, and started in.
Which led me to now.
I was getting more and more upset.
"Tate isn't good for you, or for your father. He's a bad kid, and always has been. His mother is a whore, and I'm sure that his sister is, too." She paused for a breath. "That father of his was the only smart one in the bunch, leaving before he got sucked into their demented vortex." She smiled like she was imparting some great news to me. "I saw him a few weeks ago. He has a new wife and kids. They're much more well rounded than Tate Casey is."