The Single Undead Moms(59)
“Mmm-hmm,” I murmured. As soon as I figured out what the hell had just happened.
Once we cleared the front door, my shoulders sagged from the tension of my ramrod posture. I sighed, rubbing my free hand over my face. Wade’s hand slipped around my waist, and he guided me toward my minivan.
“I can’t believe I keep letting them get to me, when I’ve got so many other things to worry about. I can’t believe I baked those damn brookies. Do you have any idea how bad brownies smell to a vampire’s nose? I feel like I’ve been rolling around in toxic sludge for the past couple of hours.”
“Ah, screw ’em,” Wade told me, nudging me against the hood of my van and dropping the brookies gently to the ground. “I’ll eat every one of those damn brownie-cookie things.”
He was standing so close, bracketing my legs with his thighs and pinning me to the van. I laughed when he took my hands in his, lacing our fingers together as his hair fell forward over his forehead. “So I guess I’ll be picking you up from the hospital when you get sick from cocoa overload.”
“It’d be worth it if it took that miserable look off your face.” I could feel his breath against my mouth, like I could swallow his words, breathe him in.
“You know what buying all those brookies means in the Hollow, Wade. You know what people are going to think, especially after Roy seeing us in the parking lot the other night—which, by the way, seems to be a bit of a pattern with us. And I don’t want things to become . . . difficult for you and Harley because you’re getting lumped together with me.”
“Darlin’, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I ain’t exactly the Hollow’s idea of a model citizen. If you think people give you the cold shoulder around here, you should see how quick they clam up when the tattooed guy comes strolling into the Quik Mart. Besides, ya don’t have a husband to step in and defend your bakin’ honor. I thought you’d appreciate the help.”
“I do, I just . . . It’s been a while since anyone . . . I do appreciate it.”
“You never really talk about him. Your husband.”
“And you don’t talk about Harley’s mom,” I countered.
“Should we?”
No. Absolutely not. I did not want to hear about the beautiful woman who had given birth to Harley and walked away, breaking Wade’s heart. Because then I might have to track her down and break her face. “I don’t know. Isn’t it sort of early to share our tales of woe?”
“We’ve survived a Bigfoot birthday party and made out against your minivan at a shoppin’ center. I’d say we’re due some backstory. Did ya love him?”
“I thought I loved him, in the beginning. I was young, and I was stupid, and I thought that being loved by someone meant that they stuck around, that you didn’t fight with them all of the time. I didn’t exactly have a great role model on which to base a comparison. I married him because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. We dated for more than a year. He proposed to me at one of his family’s famous Fourth of July barbecues. Just knelt down in front of me and sixty or so of his nearest and dearest and shoved a ring at me. And then compounded the pressure by saying the ring was my birthday present. How was I supposed to say no?”
“Ya say, ‘No, thank you, I don’t wanna marry you because I don’t think I love you,’ ” he said, doing a very poor job of impersonating me.
“Well, when you are a woman in her twenties living in a small town and you have been dating a man for a year, if he proposes to you in front of his family, you have to have a pretty good reason for saying no. Like ‘he’s a compulsive-gambling hoarder who parades around in my underwear when I’m at church.’ Something like that. I knew we didn’t have a lot of passion between us, but I thought we had a firm foundation, one of those slow and steady couples who make it for the long haul. You know? But the longer we were married, the more he became like his father, and the more he expected me to be like his mother . . . and I knew I’d made a mistake. But we had Danny, and I . . . just made the best of it. And then he passed away, and I’m still not sure how to feel about it.”
Wade was still giving me side-eye.
“OK, Mr. Judgy, how did you end up president of the Cranky Single Parent Club?” Apparently, my need to protect myself from information was outweighed by my need to redirect his focus.
“Well, I wish I could say it was some great tragic romance like yours.” He smirked at me. I scratched my nose with my middle finger, which he seemed to find hilarious, given the way he cackled. “But ta be honest, Lisa Ann was just some girl I dated for a couple of months. Nothing serious, just ‘Hey, you’re here, I’m here, and our parts match up.’ ”