My face felt like someone was holding a blowtorch to it. “No.”
“Hayes? He’s breaking all his rules for you.” He came back to me and brushed a strand of hair out of my face. “Things are okay, though?”
I was going to murder Aunt Jolene. I nodded emphatically. “There was no pregnancy scare. I got the morning after pill the next day and then started birth control.”
He cocked his head to the side and put his hands on his hips as he stared off at nothing. “Huh. I guess I thought something like that would freak me out more.”
A bundle of nerves in my stomach fluttered. “I mean, it would’ve been Hayes’ mess up, right?”
His eyes snapped back to mine. “Maybe in a different relationship.”
I swallowed. “What do you mean?”
He moved closer until I had to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. “Hayes always used to lick the last roll so we wouldn’t want it. Just because he’s a few minutes older than us, he thought he had the right to claim things. Fights for the last roll used to end with black eyes and bloody lips. You’re worth a fuck ton more than a roll, sweetheart. If he knocks you up, it’s not an automatic win.”
I bit back a smile and raised my eyebrows at him. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Yep.” He kissed my forehead and then stepped back. “I’m taking you on a date.”
“I didn’t think we had anything planned-”
“It’s not for the fucking PR shit.”
My smile won out. “Oh.”
He shifted and reached up to take his cowboy hat off. Twisting it in his hands, he cleared his throat. “Well?”
I laughed and then nodded when he looked like he was going to puke. “Yes, I’ll go on a date with you. I mean, you asked so politely.”
He scowled at me. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
I snorted. “You don’t know pain in the ass until you’ve been-”
“Cassidy?”
I grinned. “Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“Tell me where we’re going first. Do I need to change?”
“No, you’re perfect.”
“And where are we going?” I watched him continue to smirk at me and groaned. “Fine. Keep your secrets.”
And he did. He didn’t give anything away and I only saw where he was taking me when we showed up outside of a pottery painting studio. He watched me closely for signs of how I felt about it and it was easy to show him what he wanted. I was over the moon. I’d always wanted to paint pottery but no one would go with me.
“This is amazing! I’m so excited! Come on, hurry up!” I grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the front door faster. Before I opened the door, though, I stopped and threw my arms around his waist. “Thank you, West.”
He grunted and let out a gust of breath that made the hair in my bun shift. “Don’t thank me yet. I’m pretty sure they’re not used to men with hands the size of baseball mitts in there. There’s a sixty percent chance I break at least four things in there.”
Feeling like a true skank, I grabbed one of his hands and brought his palm up to my lips to kiss it. “I happen to think they should create some sort of monument to these baseball mitts.”
His smile was so wide and sweet that I felt another chunk of the wall around my heart crumble. “Yeah? Should I start a list of the parts of you there should be monuments crafted for?”
I kissed his palm again and grinned. “Nope. Come on. I want to paint all the pottery. No one would ever do this with me back in LA. The guys would’ve laughed at me if I’d even asked and the girls on the cheer team weren’t into this kind of thing. You bringing me here is the sweetest, best thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
He let me pull him inside and after a few minutes of an older woman telling us how everything worked, we were at a table across from each other with a bunch of kids on one side and a group of wine drunk women on the other side. I’d picked a huge mug to paint and I couldn’t help laughing when I saw that West had picked a tiny statue of a dog. It looked ridiculous in his hands but the way he cradled it made me and several of the women beside us stare at him with hearts in our eyes. I didn’t understand how he was the same man who’d so viciously hated me.
