What is love?
My heart breaks for him.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
ZIGGY
Ihave exactly zero complaints about Kennedy showing up and feeding me. He noticed I don’t have an oven, so dinner came precooked, and we sit on a log together outside and eat it while the sun sets.
The whole time, I’m overly tuned in to him. His muscular arm brushes against mine every time one of us moves, and my heart is still in overdrive from him catching the sauce by my mouth with his thumb. He keeps shooting me smiles like he can’t help himself, but they’re more restrained than the ones that set off fireworks in my gut.
It’s taken me all through dinner to land on a question that doesn’t sound stupid.
“How was your day?”
He finishes chewing and swallows, eyes squinting a little as he thinks. “Interesting, I’d say.”
“Why?”
“I mean, Hart was gone for most of it, but before he left, I think I had a moment with my brothers.”
I lift my eyebrows, encouraging him to continue.
“We don’t really talk. Or … they don’t. I don’t stop talking, but trying to get a real conversation out of them is like pulling teeth. I hate it.”
“Sorry …” I whisper. “I’m not good at it either.”
Stupid, pussy, useless.
He turns to me, and I’m confused how he can look surprised. “You’re so good at it. What do you mean?”
I give him the driest look possible, but he waves it off with a flick of his hand.
“You give me the real stuff. You let me in; that’s all I want. I just want to know people in here.” He reaches over to tap his finger against my chest. “My brothers have their feelings on everything locked down tight. It wasn’t always like that. But this morning, it almost felt like old times for a second.”
The hope in his voice is so Kennedy. The man who wants to see the best in people. I have no idea how he’s related to his brothers when they’re both so … let’s go with different. I suppose there has to be a moment where a guy decides to be nice to his boyfriend’s brothers.
I reach up and slide my hand over the back of his neck, giving it a supportive squeeze.
“Thanks. It felt good.” Like he’s remembering himself, he straightens, putting some distance between us. “How was your day?”
Planning a hot water system for them and a mine remodel for me? I steal his answer. “Interesting.”
“Good.” That’s all he gives me, and I wonder if he’s as nervous about our relationship as I am. It’s all new for me, and like Rooney said, the rules are a mystery. I’m prepared for Kennedy to turn into an overbearing love monster, and I know I’ll be able to handle it, but as for what he wants from me? It would help to ask him, but an almost thirty-year-oldman questioning how to be a boyfriend is almost as pathetic as googling love.
I’m going to have to follow Kennedy’s lead and trust my instincts.
You know, those same instincts that ended up with me in the middle of nowhere, lonely and living in a mine.
Forcing courage that catches even me by surprise, I slide closer, until our hips touch, and then I pull his face to mine. For all the weird hesitancy I’ve been feeling tonight, there’s none of it in the kiss. I could spend all night like this, but there’s something I want more. Something I’ve been thinking about most of the day.
I suck on his tongue while my free hand slides up his thigh and settles over the straining bulge between them.
His chuckle fills my mouth. “I was about to say I should head home, but we’ve got time for that first.”
Home?
