“You know, deep and crisp and even.”
“It’s a Christmas song about pizza?”
“Nooooo,silly, it’s…”
He changed, subtly. I couldn’t figure out how, but something about the shift made me go very still, blinking at eyes that focused hard on my mouth.He’s going to kiss me.
He didn’t.
Kiss me. Do it. Let me feel those hard-looking lips on mine, put those hands on me again.
“I’ll tell you the truth, Christa, because you seem like a nice person and…” He shut his eyes with a sharp sigh, took a sip, and turned away. “I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up.”
“My hopes?” I shook my head and opened my mouth to deny that I’d had any hopes.
“I spent about two years on the street.”
I straightened, my skin suddenly blazing hot. “On the—”
“Homeless.”
“Oh. Okay?”
“And it’s not ’cause I don’t have family or any shit like that. I do. I have parents who love me and four sisters. They all love me. They wanted me to move in with them. They live an hour from here and I almost never see ’em.”
He paused. Did he want me to say something? Because there wasn’t really anything, was there? His life was so different from mine. Who was I to judge or assume or even comment?
And what did he think my hopes were up about, exactly? Those words of his wound a thread of irritation through me.
“I chose to stay out on my own. In the woods, mostly, though I slept on a few city streets.” He threw a side eye my way. “Seattle once, actually.”
Oh, my God. Had I walked by him at some point? Had I given him money as I stomped down the sidewalk on my way to work? I racked my brain, trying to remember if I’d ever seen him before.
“Lasted about five hours in the city before I had to turn around and leave again.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“You ever feel trapped in your life?”
“Uh.” Had I? I thought about it, hard, since he was giving me honesty, telling me real things, and he deserved a real answer. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I felt trapped in my job, actually. Project 54. But there’s not that much work around here, so I stuck with it. Before, too, I guess. In relationships, even. My last boyfriend wanted to get married and I didn’t really want to, but…” Whoa. Was it him or the booze bringing this stuff out? Because I’d never, ever thought of myself as being trapped with my ex before. Even when I broke off the wedding, I’d made it more about our differing priorities than anything else.
“But?”
“I agreed to anyway. What kind of jerk wouldn’t want what he was offering, right?”
“Why didn’t you want it?”
“Honestly?” I met his eyes, feeling brazen, suddenly, with my secrets out. “I loved him like a friend. He was funny and warm, comfortable. All of those things.” I swallowed. “But I wasn’t attracted to him anymore.” Unlike Micah, who I’d spent less than 24 hours with. This guy, I was attracted to with every hair, every pore, every nerve in my body. “Maybe never was.”
“Why were you with him, then?”
“I’d say laziness, but I don’t think it was that.” I eyed him—big shoulders, straight back, everything solid and sure. “I’d had a run of jerks before. Guys always looking for greener grass, or something? Like I was a stepping stone to some perfect vision they had. Fine for a while, but not marriage material. And my ex, well, he loved me. Like,reallyloved me. And I figured…” I waited for the answer to come, in a way baffled, again, by my own incomprehensible choices. “I figured he was it for me.”
“Except no sex.”
Sex.Just hearing the word on this man’s lips made my body react—as if to prove how stupid I’d been to think, once upon a time, that maybe I wasn’t sexual anymore, because I hadn’t been able to get it up for my ex.
“Right.”
