Girl in Love(73)

Kylie gaped at him as he pulled the items he’d gotten at the gas station from the brown paper sack.

“What are we doing?” she asked softly. The vulnerable plea softened the hardened wall he’d been holding up with all his might.

He sighed loudly as he lowered himself into his own chair.

“I’m trying here, Kylie Lou. I really am. But I don’t know what you want or need from me. And if the answer is that what you want and need from me is for me to stay the hell out of your life or pretend like I don’t give a damn, well…I don’t know if I can.”

He turned and let his stare press into her gaze. For a brief moment, he felt as if he really could read her mind. Hope, fear, and honest to God pain flashed from the depths of her wide expressive eyes. Whatever she was feeling, he was right there with her.

“Why not? I mean, why can’t you?”

The glimpse at that girl, that same vulnerable heart-on-her-sleeve girl, caught him off guard, and he had to look away to keep from taking her face in his hands and claiming her mouth as his.

“Hell if I know. I just know I can’t.”

Never in his life had he been this invested in the life of any other woman he’d been with. And of all of them, she was the one who actually had her shit together and truly didn’t need him. Didn’t even seem to want him. Or she didn’t seem to want to want him, anyway.

The song had been too much for her to handle. He saw that now and judging from the way she was looking at him—doe-eyed and held captive by something she was obviously terrified of—he was going to have to back it down a notch or she was going to bolt before he could blink.

He cleared his throat and made a pathetic attempt at shrugging. “Maybe we could call a truce. Try being friends. You know. People who spend time together, work together, without any old vendettas or bad memories getting in the way? Clean slate?”

Glancing out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she’d turned to face the fire and was staring intently into the flames. The pages of her stepmother’s book were turning to ash as the cover curled and wilted around them.

Sparks and glowing embers floated into the night sky. Trace watched them go, vanishing into thin air, and wished he could figure out a way to do the same thing to the pain he’d caused her.

“They weren’t all bad.” Her voice was so low he wondered if he’d imagined it. “The memories, I mean.”

Her confession nearly gutted him. It took him a minute to recover the playful demeanor he was hell-bent on maintaining. She’d had enough stress for one day.

“Well of course not. I’m awesome in the sack.” He turned and gave her his panty-dropping grin. The one she’d always been immune to.

Apparently she still was.

She rolled her eyes and reached for a marshmallow. He watched as she speared it on her stick and thrust it into the flames.

“Last I checked, I wasn’t so bad myself.”

It was his turn to lose himself staring at her as her full lips blew on her flaming glob of sugar before pulling it gently from the stick. He would’ve handed her a graham cracker or the chocolate bar he’d bought, but he was unable to move.

Emotions he’d never felt before—well, before her—threatened to strangle him then and there as she worked to build her s’more.

Damn straight she wasn’t so bad in bed. She was downright fucking amazing.

His head swam with the memory of parting and filling her, holding her in his arms while she let out those breathy whimpers that sounded better than any song he’d ever played. Or ever even heard for that matter.

His warm memories began to burn with the raging heat of jealousy, of knowing he hadn’t been the only one to have her that way. But the other guy had thrown in the towel and bailed on her. Just like everyone else.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It made him happy. It made him miserable. Knowing he was yet again responsible for something going wrong in her life twisted him into an incomprehensible mess of a man.

“Hey,” he began, “I know this is more than you want to hear right now, but I...” Panic had him choking on his own words. He took a deep breath.

Kylie regarded him warily once again. “What is it?”

I love you. I can’t live without you. I need you to forgive me more than I need to breathe to survive.

He couldn’t tell her any of that. Not yet. So he said the one thing he could.

“If there’s anything I can do to help with the stepmom situation, you just say the word.” The look on her face, the one that said she was touched by his offer, compelled him to continue. “And, uh, for the record, there isn’t a limit to what I would do to keep from hurting you again.” He swallowed hard and watched the pain dance across her face. “I’m not perfect—you know that better than anyone. And I will screw up. But hand to God, if I can keep from hurting you or keep anyone else from hurting you, I will move mountains and hell itself if I have to.”