My stomach was clenched tight with nerves—scared that he’d say no and fucking petrified that he’d accept.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you guys to sort out the details.” Silas stood up straight and glanced out the window to where Marlon was standing like a sentry at the end of my half-plowed driveway. He shook his head in amused exasperation. “But look, Parker, offer’s open, okay?” Silas squeezed Parker’s shoulder and, I couldn’t say for sure from this position, but I was pretty sure he gave him a wink also. “Pretty sure you’ll find most people around here feel the same way. You’ll have lots of offers right here in O’Leary.”
And even though I knew better—absolutely, totally, completely knew for afactthat Silas was head over ass for Everett and his words had been nothing more than a friendly gesture—I found myself gritting my teeth. When Silas called out a goodbye as he walked to the door, I barely mumbled something back.
Parker had gone back to swinging his feet, but he was watching me again, and I got the feeling that I was supposed to say…something… but I had no fucking clue what he wanted.
It was amazing that I could read this guy like a book when I had my tongue in his mouth and my hands on his body, but when it came to anything else, anything that didn’t involve sex and saliva andfuck me harder, it was like we spoke two wildly different dialects of the same language and were constantly misreading each other.
Parker’s phone clattered on the counter near his hip and he glanced down, breaking the stalemate. His lips twisted.
“Beatrice wants to know when I’ll reschedule my flight,” he said offhandedly. He looked back at me again. “I’m not sure what to tell her.”
I shrugged. “Your call, Parks.” It always had been. “You wanna stick around, you’ve got a place.”
His nostrils flared. “Yeah? For how long? Could take weeks. Could take a month or two. Who fucking knows?”
I sighed. “I know. It’s not ideal, and it won’t be fun.” In fact, I’d bet sticking around here when he could be out in the world, making new plans and conquering new goals, was gonna suck ass for him. “But we can make it work.”
Something moved over Parker’s face—disappointment or maybe sadness—and I got it. I did. He wantedout,and he was being forced to stay.
“And how would it even work, me living here? Polite strangers indefinitely?” he demanded.
I rolled my shoulder trying to ease the tightness there. “We haven’t exactly excelled at that from the first minute. We can be… friends, I guess. I mean, underneath everything, I never stopped caring,” I admitted. “About you.”
Parker peered at me. “You’re serious.”
“I—” I started, stopped, tried again. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Because, let me just remind you that, this magical weekend of sexcapades aside, you have been anassholeto me for… oh, let’s round up to ayear.”
“And I apologized for it.”
“Noooo.” He shook his head slowly and gripped the counter on either side of his legs so hard his knuckles turned white. “You apologized for coming into my bar and making a spectacle of yourself, knocking over chairs and yelling about the temperature of your beer.”
I ran my tongue over my front teeth. Ihad. And it had madesomuch sense at the time. But right now, it was hard to remember why I’d done those things. And really fucking hard to hold the moral high ground in this conversation.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he continued. “What about all the times I tried to talk to you and you literally pretended I wasn’t there? Or the time you told me this town wasn’t big enough for the both of us, like we were gonna be gunfighters drawing down at high noon in the middle of Weaver Street?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Or what about the time you told me—” Parker’s voice cracked just a little, and he cleared his throat before he continued, “that what we had was dead and buried?”
I watched him steadily from the other side of the kitchen. We were two islands that had once been a single continent, and now found ourselves separated by an ocean of terra-cotta tile and bad memories. And that was my doing… at least partly. Cutting him off had been my attempt at self-preservation—it wouldn’t hurt as much when he inevitably left, if I didn’t get close to begin with.
And look how well that turned out, you idiot.
In the end,I’dhurthim. I hadn’t known I could.
So I fell back on what I knew to be true. “I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy and successful.”
“You sound like my mother.” Parker’s gaze locked on mine, green like storm-tossed waves. “You might wanna watch that.”
“Yeah, well. It worked out for the best in the end, right? You went off and got your degree. Got job experience. Had a good time in Boston. Saved enough to open your bar.”
Parker lowered his eyes to the floor and nodded slowly. “Sure. All for the best.” He took a deep breath. “And if I stay here now, we’ll be… what? Friends? Or friends with benefits?” He sounded absolutely disgusted. “Because I reallyhatethat shit, Jameson. Either we’re friends, or we’re together. All in or all out.”
I swallowed. “Well, together’s not an option I’m interested in.” Not when he was heading for Arizona the minute he got paid. “I guess we could try to keep things platonic. I’d do that, if you wanted.”
