“I am not in lo—”
“And have basically declared your complete and utter devotion to her anyway since you haven’t been with anyone since she so much as stepped foot into town, so you might as well have sex while you’re at it.”
“We didn’t have sex,” I bit out through clenched teeth. When he just raised a brow, I groaned and pulled off my hat, running a frustrated hand through my hair before replacing it. “Technically, we didn’t, but I still fucked up. I can’t believe I did that.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty shocked too. At this point, I figured it’d take an act of God to get you to cross that boundary. Nice job.”
“Nice job? Are you serious? I’m worried about ruining the best relationship I’ve ever had, and you want to pat me on the back?”
“Um, first of all, hello?” He reached over and flicked me on the forehead. “I’mthe best relationship you’ve ever had.”
“You don’t count.”
“And second, you didn’t ruin it.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Well, you can’t know you did, either. Did shesayyou ruined it?”
“No.”
“Did she act any differently?”
I assumed he probably didn’t mean differently in the way that I now knew what she sounded like when she came and that her blush did, in fact, spread down her chest when she was turned on. “No.”
He shrugged. “Then you didn’t ruin it.”
“It’s not always that simple.”
“Sometimes it is,” Ford said, all notes of teasing gone.
“Aren’t you always the one reminding me I have a one hundred percent fail rate at relationships?”
“Everyonehas a one hundred percent fail rate at relationships unless they’re currently in a committed relationship. And nobody involved in this conversation is. That doesn’t mean you just give up entirely. What, are you going to spend the rest of your life alone?”
“Since you’re always up my ass, that’d be impossible.”
“Maybe now, but one of these days, I’m going to lock down a cool-as-fuck woman, have her make an honest man out of me, and enjoy the hell out of making some babies with her. And then where are you going to be?”
“Oh, you thinkyou’regoing to be able to make a relationship last? We grew up in the same house with the same parents. And our examples weren’t exactly shining.”
Yes, our mom had been an amazing mother who loved her family beyond all reason. She strived for perfection, but that had been hard, considering she was basically a single parent raising six kids. It didn’t matter that she was technically married and that our dad was technically around. Not when he chose alcohol over her and us time and time again. She’d tried to keep that hidden from us, but the older we’d gotten, the easier it had been to see. There’d been fights and makeups and so much tension it was like a constant weight bearing down on us.
If that was what love was—what forever was—I didn’t want any part of it.
“Brady had the same parents, too,” Ford said, pulling a piece of bacon from God knew where and feeding it to Chuck. “You don’t think he and Luna are going to last?”
Truthfully, I didn’t know. I hoped they would because he deserved it after stepping in as the family leader and pulling us through years of struggles without so much as a single complaint. And Luna was good for him, softening his sharp edges and loosening him up a bit. But I couldn’t see the future for them any more than I could see it for myself.
“Look, man, nobody knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone in years,” he said. “Our family is aware of that more than most. But what Idoknow is that you’d rather cut off your own balls than hurt Everly.”
I blew out a breath, wanting his words to ring true but unable to deny the reality. “I might have already hurt her, though.”
He squinted one eye and tipped his head to the side, studying me. “Nah, I don’t think so. I saw her this morning, and for someone whose house just burned down, she was in a better mood than I expected. I’m guessing that had something to do with yourtechnically not sex. You take note of those highlighted parts too and use them to your advantage?”
“How the hell do you know about those?”
He shrugged. “She left a book sitting on the counter one day. I peeked. And got a whole fucking eyeful.”
