He sees the realization dawn on my face and gently tilts my chin up with a rough thumb. His eyes are dark, raw, searching mine for something.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. About my past. About Darla. I wasn’t trying to hide it, Baby Girl, I swear. I just— I didn’t think it mattered. Didn’t want to waste space between us on something that’s dead and buried.”
“You were engaged,” I say quietly.
Not accusing.
Just confirming.
He nods, once.
“We’d been together since high school. Got engaged a few years after. I was stupid and restless and thought loving someone meant doing what they wanted. She wanted out of here. A fast life. City lights. I tried to be what she needed, and in the end, she left anyway.”
I bite my lip, absorbing that.
“When?”
“I don’t know, like twenty years ago.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Haven’t seen her since. Didn’t give her a second thought until today. And even then, only because she might’ve gotten near you.”
My chest tightens.
“People assumed you never got over her.”
He huffs.
“I can’t control that. Let ‘em assume. Fact is, I don’t care what people think—except for you. And it wasn’t until Kelly called that it hit me you might hear that shit and believe it.”
I shake my head slowly. “So Kelly knows about us now?”
“Yeah. Why? Fuck. You think I’m trying to keepusfrom her? No, no, no. Willow, I swear?—”
“I didn’t say that,” I tell him.
He still looks horrified.
I want to laugh. I want to reassure him, and since I can’tnottouch him when he’s this close, I squeeze the hands I already have on his wide shoulders.
“Look, Thatcher, this is still new. We don’t know each other well enough yet?—”
“Fuck that. I know you. Tell me I don’t know you, Baby Girl. And I’m an open book. Anything you want, Willow, you ask and I’ll tell you.”
“Okay, so why all this when I got here? Not that I’m complaining,” I begin.
“Shit. Okay. Well, truth is I-I thought you left me,” he says so low I almost don’t hear him.
He thought I left? Why?
Oh.
“Thatcher, I wasn’t late to punish you or freak out. What happened at the bank shocked me, yeah, but I wasn’t running away. One of the lanes on the highway was closed, and traffic was hell. And then my phone died.”
“What? That’s it?”
He cocks his head to the side, and he looks so damn cute it isn’t even fair.
“That’s it.”
A muscle in his jaw jumps.
