She takes a deep breath while her wide eyes roam my face. They’re the softest they’ve ever been and make me bury my face in the crook of her neck. I swipe my nose against her skin and inhale her.
I pull back.
“Come right here…” I murmur, pulling her to my chest. “Come tell me what happened today before all this. I wanna talk about you right now—not about my problems. I just wanna hear about you. I want you to be selfish right now. I…I got you so wrapped up in me you can’t even focus on yourself. That’s not how this is supposed to go.”
I wrap one hand around her hot cheeks and rake my fingers through her hair with the other.
“But Rich?—”
“What did I say?”
Her mouth opens, and I feel my problems getting ready to pour out of it again.
“Be selfish, Lovie.”
“His agent showed up on our porch. Kenny called him. They want me to sign an NDA so I can’t talk about what he did to me,” she blurts.
I swipe my sweaty hands down the back of her sweatshirt while my heart races. “Keep goin. I’m listening.”
Her mouth opens again, and her words get stuck in her throat. She still wants to talk about me. After everything she’s been through today, her mind isstillwrapped around me and my problems.
“Get my problems out of your head and tell it, baby. Tell me what else sent you running to me.”
“He’s the golden boy without a stain on his reputation, and I’m just the weak girl who won’t be able to fight the machine he has behind him if I tell everybody what he’s been doing to me. His agent says he wants to work things out with me. He says AJ begged him to come to the house too, but he advised him against it and made him stay back at the hotel.”
I hear the exhaustion in her voice. It marries with each word she chokes out. Everything comes out in chunks with no clear beginning or end. I don’t get all the details that my brain needs—the how, when, and where.
“Talk. I need to know what you think,” she says.
I shake my head, pulling her down on my chest again. “No.”
“I don’t care about healing and hating all men right now. I need to know what you think because I can’t breathe or think without you right now…” she whines. “I need to know what to do?—”
“Close your eyes.”
“Rich.”
“Shhh. You ain’t listening to me. What did I say?”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” I brush my fingers across her eyelids until they finally flutter shut.
Her head rises and falls with my chest and I drag the pads of my fingers against her scalp in lazy circles while I try to forget every word Arnez yelled at us.
It doesn’t take long for my heartbeat to lull Slim into a restless sleep with her hand clenched into a tight fist and her eyebrows bunched together.
I wrap my arms around her and rock her back and forth. “You wanna know what I think? Youreallywanna know what this stupid ass man thinks, baby?”
She lets out a deep murmur in her sleep.
I steal another kiss from her lips and swipe my finger across her eyebrows. “I think…I think you better not sign a motherfuckin thing they give you and the next time they find you, you better not run. You poke your chest out, look them right in their eyes and tell them where they can find me so I can take care of it because you still have a life to live and I promise you’re gonna live it. I want you happy and safe, and taken care of. You gotta be the strong one, remember? Because…because I’m the weak one out of the two of us. I can be selfish and let you endure this bullshit with me, because I’m a stupid man, but you’re smarter…stronger…and better than me. You know you deserve better than me.”
I don’t remember crying so much in my life before Slim came along, but here I am at my big-ass age, swiping away hot tears again while trying my best not to stir her awake.
“I told you I wasn’t for forever,” I murmur. “But you so goddamn hardheaded. You never listen.”
I pull open the middle console and grab my phone to call Faye, but I’m so stupid and selfish that I unlock it and swipe through me and Slim’s texts so I can steal a few more minutes with her in my arms.
