“Well… please tell me you’ll at least wash his blanket before he gets home.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I can take his blanket to the laundromat.”
Then Amos rumbled quietly, “Shelly, is this going to fuck up everything between us? I knew I shouldn’t have done this. Not withyou.”
“No,” I said firmly. “It won’t change things between us. But I do understand now why you have a reputation.”
He frowned at me. “What reputation?”
I sat down on the edge of the bed beside him and reached for my shoes. “I’ve heard things. That this bronco’s only good for one thing.” I tugged my shoe on and glanced at him sideways. “Now I understand what they mean.”
His brow furrowed, and he didn’t fire back with a joke the way he normally would.
“Women say that about me?”
“Yeah. They say you’re good for a one-night rodeo and nothing more.”
He just sat there for a moment, looking kind of stunned.
Then he quietly rumbled, “I don’t think I’m dating material.”
I almost laughed, but something in his voice stopped me. All his swagger was gone.
“Because you can’t help spreading the love around? Not every man is built for monogamy. Just ask my first boyfriend.”
He shook his head slowly. “No. That’s not it. I’d be happy to commit to one pussy for life. But… no one ever wants to date me. They just want to fuck me a few times before they find their forever dude.”
The room went quiet.
The flamboyant, bold man who’d had the whole Bear Den eating out of his hand a few hours ago was nowhere to be found.
This was theotherAmos. The one most people never got to see.
The one I talked to late at night, at Mason’s parties, after everyone else had drifted off and gone home.
One time we sat there so long the bonfire burned to embers. It was only when the morning light began to shine in the sky that we even noticed that we’d talked the whole night through.
I fixed my hair as best I could with my fingers, while I gently asked, “Tell me about your last girlfriend, Amos. What went wrong? There must be a reason you don’t date anymore. Did someone break your heart?”
I tried to think back to who he’d been serious with, but I couldn’t come up with a single name. He’d fucked half the town, and some of those women were secretly in love with him, like I was.
But anyone who actually dated him? I drew a blank.
He shook his head and growled, “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Amos. You tell meeverything. Don’t be shy.”
He looked down at his hands and muttered so quietly that I could hardly make out his words. “I’ve never had one.”
I went still. “You’re thirty-six years old.”
He cleared his throat, his jaw working. “Iknow. Every time I’ve ever brought it up to anyone, they just laughed… like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.”
Oh. Shit.
He was being serious.
I could see it happening so clearly it made my chest ache.
