I grin. “Of course not. Why would anyone want to fuck me?”
Leif swallows hard, and Aidan clears his throat awkwardly. “Go talk to him. Just thirty seconds. Aidan can pour coffee. I attest on his behalf. I’ll supervise everything.”
“I have nothing to say to him,” I say, putting one hand on my hip.
Aidan ushers me to the front door, one arm on my shoulder. I ask Bob on my way by if he needs anything. He winks in response.
I hand Aidan the ticket book and tell him the guy in the suit needs his check. He smiles widely like I’ve entrusted him with a billion dollars. Tahoe is kicking the tires of the truck in the muddy parking lot.
“What do you want?” I call out.
At the sound of my voice, he hangs his head. “They told you to come out here?”
“Said you wanted to talk to me,” I say.
He looks like crap. His face is haggard, and his tan skin is a pallid color. “Tyler, I really don’t have anything else to say to you.”
“I fuck virgins,” he says, a hint of meanness inside his words.
I raise my brows. “That’s great. Just not me then. What a compliment. I didn’t come out here to fight with you about your drunken declarations. Aidan is in there waiting on my tables.”
He kicks the chunks of wet mud with his big combat boots. “I fucked everything up, okay? Stay away from me and them,” he says.
I laugh. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Caroline, I’m telling you for your own good. We aren’t good men. I saved you. Stringing you along for all this time was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. I’m sorry for that. I am.”
Frustration rears, leaving me furious. “I don’t need agoodman to take my virginity. At this point I just need someone who isn’t afraid to do it. Aren’t men supposedto want a virgin? I saw on the news one woman auctioned hers off. Maybe that’s what I’ll do. Get it over with so you’ll find me attractive.”
He spins, looking at me dead on for the first time since I came outside. “That’s seriously what you fucking think? That I don’t find you attractive enough?” He steps toward me. I look away, at the window where his friends are staring at us from their booth. The soft glow of the light behind them masks the expressions on their faces. “A war doesn’t have anything on what you make me feel.” He gets so close that I can feel the heat from his breaths.
I have to close my eyes. To get away from him in one way because it’s too much. Having him this close but not being able to touch him.
“You are dangerous, Caroline,” he says. I open my eyes as his flutter closed. “You threaten everything I’ve ever stood for. Everything I thought I needed. Wanted. I’m doing you a favor. Be reasonable, please.”
“That’s it then?” I ask. “We’ll just pretend there’s nothing between us? This is a small town in case you haven’t noticed.” His B&B comes to mind and how entangled he is with my world now.
He backs away a step and inhales deeply. “Pretending is going to be hard for a while. I need to get the fuck away from you.”
“How can you do this? I don’t understand. How can you throw this away so easily? For something so trivial?”Before it ever really started.Maybe my hesitance was warranted, maybe he was never that into me. Reading things this wrong is something I’ll probably never recover from.
“You’re asking the wrong questions,” Tahoe replies. To his credit, he looks tortured and crestfallen. Like someone else made this decision for him, and there’s nothing he can do to change it.
Licking my lips, I take a step back toward the diner. “What a joke. Have fun in New York.” All of it was too good to be true. Something picked from a movie and inserted in my life. The happily ever after doesn’t transfer over in real life, though. I’m not that naïve.
He raises his brows. “If I’m lucky, I won’t make it back.” My stomach sinks at what he’s insinuating. I can’t have him, and I don’t want anyone else to have him, but he needs to always exist. To prove what I felt, even for a small amount of time, was real.
Shaking my head, I try to process that sober Tyler Holiday is saying the same things that drunk Tyler said last night. He stares at me. Hard. Like he’s trying to figure me out. “You are something special.”
“Not special enough, though. Too small town. Too simple.” He watches my mouth as I speak.
He stalks toward me quickly, and the sudden movement takes my breath away.
“Know that anytime you move your lips I want to be kissing them,” he growls. This close I see everything hetries to hide. The specks of lighter blue in his eyes, the way his jaw tics as he holds himself back. I know what it used to mean. Does it still mean the same thing now?
Blinking away tears, I enter the diner. Aidan has a tray of food haphazardly balancing on one hand, and Caleb is wearing a scowl fit for the Grinch.
One glance at the morose demeanor of Tahoe’s table of friends tells me they watched the whole sad, sorry conversation deteriorate. Who knows? Maybe they can read lips. I could punish them for their friend’s behavior, but that would take more effort than I can muster at the moment.
