“That’s not nec—” She stops when I hold up my hand and glare down at her. Ellyn’s chuckle is smoky and electrifying.
It sends all sorts of weird tingles down my spine.
“I won’t argue,” she says. “I’ll let you be the gentleman.”
If you only knew.
There’s not one gentlemanly thing that I want to do with or to her.
A few minutes later, we’re exiting out of my driveway onto the street toward her house.
“Do you like living alone?” I ask while moving so that I’m positioned on her left side, closest to the street with her on the inside.
“I do.” She nods after looking toward the sky for a moment. “To be honest, if I knew how much I would like it, I would’ve asked for the divorce sooner,” she confesses.
“Then it was you who wanted the divorce?” I ask as we come to the stone path that leads to her porch.
“It was.”
“Did he cheat on you?” I scoured more of her YouTube videos than I care to mention, but in none of them does she talk about why she got a divorce. Which, fair, she deserves her privacy.
But the idea of some bastard cheating on her makes me see red.
“No,” she says casually. “Not that I know of,” Ellyn adds. “But who knows.”
“You sound like you don’t care.”
She grins over at me as we approach the top of her wooden porch. “I did. And, in all honesty, I have my suspicions, but that’s not the reason I asked for the divorce. And trust me when I say it took me a lot of counseling and therapy sessions to get to a point where I could feel at peace with it all.”
“But you got there?” I have to ask. She said earlier that she doesn’t miss her ex, but I need verification. And I’m a selfish bastard for asking because I did admit to missing my wife even though Gina’s been gone for over two decades now.
“I did.”
She comes to a stop in front of her door, after the motion sensor lights on her porch come on. The lights on the inside of the house turn on as well. I’m glad to see she has that safety measure in place.
“The counseling helped?” I ask.
“So much.”
I shove my hands in my pockets and glance down and to the side. “After Gina died, too many people told me I should go to grief counseling. I told them exactly where they could stuff their damn suggestions.”
Ellyn smiles.
Sighing, I run a hand through my hair.
“Took me years to finally go speak to one of those shrinks. Not until after I recognized how my own pain and grief caused me to hurt my boys. Especially Ace and his wife, Savannah.”
“But you went eventually?” Ellyn asks.
“Reluctantly. After Ace stopped talking to me.” I shake my head. “Long story. Anyway, you should get inside.”
“Thank you for dinner.”
I run the outside of my palm along her cheek. “Thanks for your help with the lights.”
“I didn’t do much.” She splays her hands against my chest, and I wonder if she can feel the way my heartbeat increases beneath her touch.
My gaze drops to her lips. And this time, the hunger welling up inside of me is too great to deny myself a taste.
