So Toxic(Bad Boy Next Door Book 4)(285)

I latched onto her hand, pulling her to a stop. “No. No. Momma’s not home right now. I know where the bandages are, I’ll fetch one.”

She narrowed her eyes for a moment. “Well, I’ll admit, I’ve been watching the road for your momma or daddy to get home. I want to introduce myself to my new neighbors. And not thirty minutes ago, I saw that brown car right there pull into your driveway. You sure your momma’s not home? Maybe your daddy’s here.”

Busted.

I stood to my fullest height, five-foot-four the last time Buck got out his Pop’s tape measure. I looked her in the eye and swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “I lied. I’m sorry. Momma’s home, but she’s sleeping and doesn’t like to be woke up. I ain’t got no daddy.”

“Next time, just tell me the truth. If we’re going to be friends, friends don’t lie to each other.”

I bit my bottom lip, twisting my fingers behind me as I nodded.

She offered her hand. “I’m Delores Dubois. And you are?”

I placed my hand in hers. “Lou.”

“Well, I’m just tickled to meet you, Lou.”

She went home, but returned a few minutes later with some ointment and bandages.

After she fixed me up, I said, “Thank you. Momma woulda whooped me good. She’s told me not to climb that tree at least a hundred times.”

She patted my cheek. “Then why climb that one? Especially when there are so many other good climbing trees around?”

I shrugged. “I like that tree, it’s the safest.”

Her eyebrows shot up and she laughed. “I don’t think so. Look at your side, Young’un. How can you say it’s the safest?”

“No one would ever follow me up it. I like to practice, just in case I ever need to get away from someone.”

She nodded as though she understood.

We sat under the weeping willow and ate muffins. She told me about her husband, Manny, and how they’d bought the old McIntire place that sat between us and the Buckners’. She made me laugh at the stories she told about her nieces and nephews. Then she invited me to visit any time I wanted.

Delores Dubois was the second person who ever made me feel important.

Buck was the first.

As though materializing from my thoughts, Buck steps around the corner of the ramshackle trailer house.

He stops, a perplexed expression on his face.

I ask, “What?”

He shakes his head as he crosses the overgrown yard to me. “Nothing, I just wasn’t expecting you to be here.”

“Oh? You mean you weren’t stalking me?”

“Fuck, Lou. You have the lowest possible opinion of me about everything, don’t you?”

I cross my arms. “Pretty much. It didn’t exactly help that you went all caveman on me at the club—”

“Okay, maybe I was out of line—maybe.”

“And then you thought you could just come over and slink your way into my bed.”

He lets out a loud huff. “Well, you left me with a raging case of blue balls, so I think we’re even.”

My eyes narrow and I poke him in the chest to emphasize each word I spit. “I left you? I left YOU? You left me first.”

“What the fuck? I wasn’t going to leave. I got you off and was planning to do it again, and again.”

“I’m not talking about last night, you jackass. For months I fucking waited for you to miss me. To call me. To come back to me. There’s no way in fucking hell you didn’t deserve every excruciating second of blue balls you had last night, and then some. A whole lot more of some. You got into my pants and couldn’t wait to take off the very next day.”

Tears prick the backs of my eyes. “You and I made love that last night. I was naïve enough to think it would make you want to stay. But I guess it meant something different to you than it did for me. And since then, I’ve seen you all over the gossip shows and in the fucking papers with a new girl every week—fuck, almost every day. Looks like hit it and quit it is your MO. So I guess I’m no different than any of them.”

The muscle ticks at his jaw. “Those girls all knew the score. I didn’t lead any of them on. I didn’t lead you on. You and I had planned for things to go just the way they did for months.”

He grabs my hand, yanking me to him, circling my waist with his other arm. “You were supposed to be heading to college. Supposed to be starting a new life. Moving on. Getting out. Both of us were.”

I look away. “Well, I didn’t go to school, and you never called. But I did get out. You did too. So I guess none of it matters now anyway.”

“It matters to me. I did what I did to help you. I never meant for it to hurt you. Never.”