“You say that like it’ll be easy.”
“No,” Tara said. “But it’ll be much more possible.”
Perhaps so.
But Steele wasn’t the only one who would need to face serious discomforts.
“What about you and Brock?” I said. “Are you pushing him? Are you trying to learn more about him? Or are you just saying that to me so you don’t feel bad about Steele?”
“You forget Steele showed up to Brock’s apartment the morning after the first night we slept together. I think if I was worried about him feeling bad, I won’t ever top that. But yes. We did that before we became official. But we’re different than you two, though.”
It all sounded just so easy. Just push Steele, give him space, and wait for the secrets to come out. It was like Tara was giving me an operation manual for a vehicle she had never learned to handle in two years of being with said vehicle.
And perhaps it could work. Steele was funny, hot as hell, and someone who, for all appearances of being an asshole biker, was a genuinely good guy.
But unlike Tara, who had become less Tara Rogers, daughter of Mark Rogers, CEO and founder of the biggest energy company in New Mexico, and just Tara, I was still Elizabeth Rogers, all those things. I still did not have the courage to free from myself from the teat that promised to nourish me until the grave. I still was dependent on others to make sure I was taken care of.
And if I was that way, if I could not confront myself, how the hell could I confront Steele? How the hell could I say that I wanted to do something dangerous when I wasn’t even willing to do something normal?
I hid behind the excuse that Steele had acted like an ass on Thursday, and it was an excuse that was well-justified. But both Tara and I knew that wasn’t the real reason.
The real reason was that I was scared of what would happen, and I was using that as an excuse not to pursue it further.
“I know,” I said. “I just hope that we’re different in the right way.”
And if we’re different in the wrong way, at least I can just go back to being a prude and grossed out by those guys.
But I know it wouldn’t be genuine.
