Cowboy Up(31)
This is the most unconventional first-date conversation, I’m sure, but nothing about how I met this woman has been ordinary, so I shouldn’t be surprised. And, if I’m honest with myself, she should know about my history with Jess before someone in town fills her in, especially if we’re gonna continue exploring this thing between us. Seeing that I plan on continuing, I want her to hear it from me. There’s no doubt, with her mama bein’ who she is, that she’ll find out sooner rather than later, and I want her knowing my side of it before the bullshit rumors hit.
“Long story short, I found her sittin’ on the floor in my room one day not long after that with a pile of condoms in her lap and my bedside drawer wide open. Who knows how long she’d been pokin’ holes in those condoms, somethin’ I probably never would’ve known about if I hadn’t come home to change the pants I tore open on some barbed wire. Lady Luck did me a favor. We had words. She tried to lie her way through the impossible until she changed tactics and broke down. Tried to explain herself and her actions, but how the hell can you justify that kind of shit? She went on and on with that bullshit until she finally dropped the act and got pissed instead. One second she was cryin’ all over me, the next she was rantin’ and ravin’ about how she had been flushin’ her pills for months, but when that didn’t work—because I wouldn’t ever fuck her bare—she started the condom shit. I don’t think she ever cared enough about me to respect what I had told her I wanted, or maybe she didn’t give a shit about me at all and only wanted what bein’ a Davis gave her. She craved my name and the money that came with it more than she wanted my baby, but figured gettin’ one was her ticket to try hookin’ both those things at once.”
“Wow,” Caroline breathes the second I stop speaking. “That’s some crazy stuff, but I’m sorry that happened to you. No one should force you to do somethin’ you don’t want to do.”
And she just continues to shock me. I expected her to push me on why I had felt so strongly against marriage and children—that’s what everyone else does when they find out why Jess and I split—but she heard my story and accepted my words with nothing but support and understanding. If this isn’t just more proof she’s someone worth . . . more, I don’t know what is. If we come to be something more than two people exploring each other, I’ll have to give her that, but it feels damn good to have her accept and support my feelings with no further explanation needed.
“We all have ugly in our past, sweetness. You just have to realize it was really life teachin’ you a lesson. When you find something that finally proves all that ugly was worth survivin’, it doesn’t look so bad when you see what kinda reward you get in the end.”
“You don’t even know me,” she gasps with wide eyes, correctly reading between the lines. I’d go through that bullshit again just to have one more taste of her. I have a feeling that after she lets those walls down and really lets me see her, I’m not going to feel any different.
“And you don’t know me. What I do know, though, is how I feel when I’m around you. I know what you feel like when you’re comin’ undone. How you curl into my side when you’re exhausted, your body trustin’ me without thought. I know you hate your feet bein’ under the covers while you’re sleepin’. And that I’ve never felt like I was comin’ and goin’ at the same damn time and not been pissed I couldn’t control the chaos of it.” I walk around the island and brush my fingertips across her neck until I’m cupping her head delicately and tipping her face up to look at me. “One night of being bad with you, Caroline, and I felt more with you in the darkness than I’ve ever felt with anyone else in the light. We might not know every little thing that makes the other tick, but you can’t deny our chemistry alone is enough to make explorin’ the rest worth it. I feel the pull to you like someone lassoed me around chest and yanked.”
“Just because we’re compatible in bed doesn’t mean we’ll be the same out of it.” Her argument is weak, since she’s staring up at me with hooded eyes and flushed cheeks that I know have nothing to do with her being embarrassed or shy. She feels it, that same yank right in the middle of the chest that is impossible to ignore anymore.
“How about we just figure out the rest together?”
“And I’m supposed to just . . . what? Trust a man I don’t know blindly?”