“The best way or the only way?”
I smirked. He grabbed the seat of my chair and pulled me to him in one quick jerk. With a firm hand under my jaw, he thumbed my cheek and then kissed the corner of my lips.
“Even when you smirk, you have the prettiest mouth I’ve ever seen.” His breath heated my skin as he said, “I think about it all the time.”
My heart stopped, and I was sure I’d blown a circuit. “All the time?” I exhaled.
“All the time. To see your mouth wrapped around my cock earlier is something I will never forget.”
My nipples tingled and tightened. I swallowed. His mouth brushed over my skin, and he pressed a lingering kiss on my temple. When he drew back, he maintained contact with a hand over my hair.
“You’re safe with me,” he said quietly, and I scrambled after his mood shift. After a beat, and without removing his hand, he said, “Forget about the scar. Just tell me about growing up in Dallas.”
“Why?” I breathed. “What will that do besides make things harder?”
“I don’t get much time with you. Indulge me.”
I waited for my heart to calm while he stroked my hair. “I was a happy kid,” I said. He nodded encouragingly, so after I dipped a buffalo wing into blue cheese dressing and took a bite, I continued. “That’s how I remember it anyway. We lived in a nice home, which actually had a white fence.” I smiled. “Gretchen and her brother, Jonathan—you met him at Lucy’s wedding—were my best friends. They lived nearby.”
“What were you like as a little girl?”
I dropped my eyes. Why was I telling him this? What was the point in learning about each other? It could only lead to more pain.
“Hey,” he whispered, and I looked up again. “What were you like?”
I closed my eyes and the memory began to seep in—the memory of the girl I was before the divorce. It was a place I rarely let myself go. “I wasalive.”
There was a hint of concern on his face when I opened my eyes again. “Alive?” he asked.
“I was always doing something. Gretchen’s mom would tease me about being a chatterbox, and when I wasn’t talking, I was making up stories or games. I wrote everything in journals. I always had a pad of paper with me.”
David tilted his head. “You don’t like writing.”
I searched my brain, trying to remember if I’d explicitly said that. “I used to. A lot. A teacher told my parents that I had a knack for creative writing and grammar skills above average for my age. My mom wrote for our local paper and had published a few books before I was born. Sometimes she had two or three novels in the works, and as soon as I was old enough, she would have me sit and edit them. When I told her I liked writing and not editing, she would make this face and tell me that I didn’t have what it took to be an author. Editing was what I should focus on.
“Anyway, regardless, Gretchen and I started an unofficial school newspaper. I would write short little articles, sometimes about our classmates, sometimes fiction, and she would illustrate it.” I blinked a few times and took a sip of water. “My dad would photocopy it, and we’d pass it out every couple weeks or so. Jonathan called us nerds, but he always stole a copy.”
“Did you ever think, as you got older, about writing your own book?”
“Only when I was a kid,” I said. “That’s my mom’s thing.”
David dropped his hand and sat back in his chair. “And you don’t want to be like her.”
“No.”
“I understand based on what little I know,” he said. “But what is it about her?”
“My mom was, and continues to be, difficult. She . . .” I studied the table as I thought. “She could be distant. And mean. She was very jealous, and sometimes, when my dad went on business trips or stayed out late, she’d drink. It made things worse. My dad stopped allowing alcohol in the house, but when she got in a mood, it didn’t stop her.”
I paused, and David placed his large hand over my lower ribs, consuming the small scar. “That’s how this happened? She was drinking?”
“Yes.” I covered his incredibly warm and comforting hand with mine. “That night . . .” I paused and closed my eyes. I inhaled deeply and deflated against the chair with a long exhale. The better part of two decades flashed behind my lids. “That night was hard, but everything that came after was worse.”
“Why?”
“Thirteen isn’t the best time to have your life flipped upside down. I was still figuring out who I was, and it was easy to shut down. I stopped playing, stopped writing, and I just . . . was different afterward. I had to grow up fast. Suddenly everyone expected me to be an adult about the whole situation, but I was just a kid. And I wanted to take care of my dad the way my mom had. Better, actually. So I had to grow up. I had to take control.”
“You like to be in control.”
