He smiled uneasily, and she wondered what the hell he was thinking. Because that back there . . . that had been a little crazy. Surely her mascara was tracking down her face in little black rivers. Her hair that she’d spent time curling was now a wet mop on top of her head.
But most of all, she’d thrown her shoes and yelled at him in the rain. Like a crazy person.
The giggle bubbled up her throat uninvited and she tried to stuff it down. But that only made it worse, so she curled in on herself and let out the laughter.
When she was able to regain her breath, she leaned back in the seat and looked over at Spencer. He’d turned on the car and was blasting the heat, but he made no move to drive.
He ran his hands over the bottom of the steering wheel, brow furrowed.
She wiped her face and under her eyes, trying in vain to get rid of the raccoon look she knew she was sporting. A quick glance in the side mirror told her that yep, she looked like a train wreck.
Which was how she felt.
Her muscles ached and her head pounded, but here, in this car, with the white noise of the hot air blasting from the vents, she stared out the windshield, feeling protected since the world outside was a blur.
She hadn’t felt safe in . . . a long time. And maybe it was the breakdown she just had in the rain or the steady presence of Spencer at her side, but she was too tired to replace the armor that had melted off her body in the parking lot.
“I’ve only lived here for about a year,” she began. “Before that, I lived in Indiana with my boyfriend.” She licked her lips, preparing for the name to drop off her tongue like acid. “Robby.” She stared straight ahead, but she felt Spencer’s gaze on her skin. She didn’t talk about Robby. Not even to Ivy. “I loved him. Or, I loved him in what I thought at the time was love. And I thought he loved me back. Things were great, until . . . until I realized they weren’t good. They were horrible, actually. He . . . ” Her voice trailed off.
Spencer took her hand. “Alex—”
“He didn’t, ya know, hit me or anything. I mean, sometimes I thought he might, but he didn’t. His words were slaps and punches and stabs to the heart enough without the actual . . . physical pain.” She took a deep breath. “I hadn’t realized how much damage he’d done until Ivy moved in. And then it was like, I finally saw our relationship from her eyes and it was horrible. I finally realized that it wasn’t okay for my boyfriend to call me a whore and tell me that he was the only one who’d put up with me. That he kept me around because he liked how I blew him.” Her voice shook, and she wasn’t sure anymore of the source of wetness on her cheeks. “So we moved. One day while he was at work. It’d been years by then, and Ivy had Violet. Violet . . . heard the things he said and is still sort of scared of men. I blame myself for that.”
She lifted her head then, to see if Spencer’s lip was curled, to see if he was looking at her like Robby had for all those years, like she was weak.
But Spencer looked . . . angry. His jaw was clenched, lips thinned, eyes hard. She registered pain in her head and winced, noticing Spencer’s knuckles were white where he held her hand. He let out a ragged breath and let go of her hand, then stared out the windshield, gripping the steering wheel.
“So that’s why I kinda lost it. Out there,” Alex said. “It wasn’t about you, really, or this date. It’s about me and my fucked-up head. And my baggage. I know that’s not what this is. That you just wanted something fun while you’re here in town and now I made it . . . not that at all. I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t apologize.” Spencer’s voice was whip-sharp, but he didn’t turn to look at her. “Don’t apologize for an asshole who needed to beat down a woman to feel like a man.”
She curled her lips between her teeth and bit down.
Spencer turned then, his blue eyes icy. “I’m . . . not always so good at saying what I feel. But right now, I’m angry. Really fucking angry. Because Alex, you . . . are vibrant. And confident. And so beautiful, it hurts to look at you sometimes. I think about you in Cal’s backyard, playing with your friends and family, smiling and laughing, and to think that a man wanted to take that spark from you . . . ” He exhaled loudly. “It makes me fucking crazy. If that arsehole was in front of me right now, I might commit vehicular homicide.”
He sounded like Ivy, but Alex’s mouth wasn’t working—to talk or smile. Because Spencer wasn’t done talking and every word was pumping fresh, hot blood into her limbs.
He ran a finger down the side of her face, his voice softening. “He was threatened by you. Because you loved and were loved and he wanted some of that for himself. He was jealous of you. Wanted your strength and your confidence and your talent and he tried to suck it right out of you for himself.”
She closed her eyes. “He succeeded.”
“Ah, Sprite.” She lifted her lids to meet his gaze. “No, no he didn’t. Because I saw it in you when we first met.”
“You did?”
“I did. It’s why I wanted you so badly. Not so I could have it for myself, but because I wanted so badly to bask in the afterglow for a little while.”
He turned in his seat to face her fully. His hair was sticking up where he ran his hands through it. She touched the top of one spike and smiled. He blew out an exasperated breath and patted it down.
“But I—”
“I brought you here because I thought it was what you wanted. I . . . thought you’d be more comfortable at a place that wasn’t posh and stuffy.” He reached out and took her hand. “I didn’t stop to think how that would look to you, that I thought this was all you were—a beer-and-burger joint. I’m not good at this. At reading people. And especially at reading women. My mum died when I was a kid and I was raised by my dad. But those are all excuses, really.” He stared at the windshield as the rain drummed on the car. “I miscalculated this. It’s why I haven’t dated in . . . who knows how long.”
She wanted to cry. How big of an asshole was she? What had she expected, a five-course dinner at a country club? He’d tried to do what he thought she’d like. “Well, shit, when you put it that way, I just sound like a big brat.”
He tugged on her hand so she’d look at him. “No, no you don’t. Tonight you . . . ” His gaze trailed down her body and then back up. “You look beautiful.”
“Looked,” she smirked.
“You still look beautiful, just a little drowned.”
She shook her head, her voice dropping, because this was a confession she hadn’t wanted to make. “I wanted to look good enough for you. So you weren’t embarrassed to be seen with some roughneck girl.”
She hadn’t known Spencer could move that fast, but with a cry of alarm, she was tugged out of her seat and splayed across his lap, her knees on each side of his hips. Spencer’s hands were on her face, pushing back her wet hair, and he was swallowing convulsively, his lips thinned. “Oh, Sprite. Oh no,” he muttered.
She gripped his wrists. “What?”
He huffed out a sad laugh. “You don’t even know.”
“I don’t even know what?” She wasn’t cold anymore, even though the jacket had slipped from her shoulders. The warm air blowing through the vents heated her back, and Spencer’s body was like a furnace. He surrounded her with his big arms and shoulders. A drop of water ran down his temple and she caught it with the tip of her finger.
Spencer’s chest expanded against hers, then contracted. “I grew up in Stockport. Do you know where that is?”
“No.”
“It’s a small town outside of Manchester, which is north of London.”
“Okay.”
He paused a moment, his eyes going distant before focusing back on her. “My father is a mechanic. He owns his own repair shop. He does all right, but we were poor. Always poor.”
She sucked in a breath. “Wait, what?”
He nodded. “Yes, I grew up working on cars with my dad.”
She was about to ask why he hadn’t told her, but then stopped herself. Because that wasn’t what they’d been. It wasn’t what they were, to talk about themselves. So she realized the shift now, from what they had to what they were building. This was something, this closed-off man admitting his roots. And it was something for her to admit what Robby had done to her. “Okay.”
He soldiered on. “But I didn’t want to work on cars. I never did. I don’t even really like cars.” She gasped in mock outrage, and that made him smile. “My dad and I never got along. He thought I was embarrassed of him, and as a punk teenager, I was. I didn’t want anything to do with him or his shop or my fucking low-class town. I wanted money and success. So as soon as I could, I left. Went to school in New York and got a job and that’s that.”
She ran a hand over his shoulder. “And you have that, right? The success, I mean. And the money.”
He didn’t answer her for a minute, and his hands settled on her hips. “Sure, sure, I have that.”
She frowned then. “So why . . . why me? Why this? I’m basically everything you left, right?”