She doesn’t even stutter after she blurts the question out. It replays in my head from front to back and back to front while she stares at me with her chest rising and falling.
“Youhaveme. You know that,” I hiss.
Her eyes graze my lap, and mine follow. “No, I don’t.”
Even my dick knows how much of a pussy I am. It pushes against my shorts and jumps right as a tiny click flows from the back of her throat.
“You told Faye she was neglectful,” she whispers. “You told her that AJ broke me. You put all of those problems that always danced in my head into perfect sentences and hurled them right at her for me.Youdid that. Then you waltzed your ass up in this park at the exact moment my ex-friends are badgering me for answers that I can’t get out, and after all that, you expect me toentertain some boy who can’t even look me in my eyes? After all that, you expect me not to want you inside of me?”
She hiccups. “What the fuck else do I have to do to have you, Rich? Tell me.”
I shake my head. “We…we can’t.”
“Why? Because you already told Faye we weren’t sleeping together? Because of Kenny? Because of what I went through with AJ? Tell me!”
I reach out to touch her face, but she knocks my hand away.
“If…if we do that shit, Lovie, that’s…that’s it.”
I sound like a dummy. I can’t even say simple words like “sex,” and I can’t tell her that as soon as I slide my dick inside of her, she’ll really know what it means for me to own her and I don’t want that for her. She’s got too much life to live and too much healing to do to be bound to me and my problems.
“I already told Kenny about us,” she mutters.
My stomach drops. “You…you did what?”
“I told him about me…and you, and he didn’t do anything you said he would do when he saw you today. He didn’t fight you. He didn’t tell you off. He didn’t lecture you or me. He acted like he was too scared to even come your way.”
I shake my head. “Why you tell him that?”
“Because I’ve realized there was one thing Senior missed in his whole plot to find a better man for Faye. He found a man who’d love her more than she loved him, but his love didn’t trickle down to me. And you knew it, didn’t you? The first time you laid eyes on me, you knew he wouldn’t protect me and probably never had. You knew Senior made a mistake. You were just pouring sugar over shit all those times you talked about Uncle Kenny to me. So I’m gonna ask you again, what more do I have to do to show you I deserve to have you inside of me?”
She glances at her dress, then her shoulder, and pulls the thin spaghetti strap down. I reach out to pull it back up, but she slaps my hand away and pulls the other strap down too.
“You sleep with all those other women, but not me? Why not me, huh? What are you afraid of? You think I’m that fucking pathetic and broken? Is that what it is?”
“Don’t you ever fix your mouth to insinuate I think some disrespectful ass shit like that about you. You lost your mind?”
“Yeah…” She nods. “That’s what happens when you don’t just give me what I want. I told you I’m not those other women. I don’t want you part-time or to pay for stuff or…or when I’m on the outs with another man. I want you twenty-four seven. Do you fuckin understand that?!”
Now my dick is so hard that it hurts to even breathe.
“Baby…” I mumble, balling my fingers into my hand. “D is still back there.”
“Then make him go away!” she hollers, looking up with tears in her eyes. “Make him!”
I pull my shirt over the middle of my shorts and yank the door handle until it unlocks. I push out of the truck, stumbling toward the back of it where Donovan leans against the tailgate, shuffling the deck of UNO cards.
His wide eyes catch mine and trail my body where my stretched-out shirt covers my dick. “Did…did I do something? I heard her yelling.”
“Nah, man. She’s just…she—just give us a minute. Let me take care of it. Give us like thirty minutes. Go see if Kenny want some help with the pit.”
He nods with his mouth open and backs away, keeping his eyes on me. I turn around, taking long strides back to the driver’s side door.
I yank it open and get back in.
In the thirty seconds I was gone, she had slipped out of her dress. Her brown nipples jut out, and the only thing she has on to keep what’s mine from the outside world is a white, lacy thong. If it wasn’t for my five percent tint and the brush of oak trees in front of us, all of Barnes-Blank Park would see what she’s been saving for me.
She looks at her thong and lifts her arms up like she can’t believe she’s half-naked in my front seat.
