Sawyer huffed out a gruff laugh and shook his head. “Telling yourself that you’re not affected doesn’t make it true, Paxton. It’s just a form of lying to yourself.”
She tore her eyes from his, choosing instead to stare at the building across the street. “Sometimes lying to yourself is a good thing,” she said. “It’s self-preservation.”
“So you’d rather lie to yourself than face the truth of what happened between us? Do you really think it’s realistic to ignore it?”
Frustration saturated the heavy sigh she blew out. She returned her eyes to his, a mixture of annoyance and pleading resting in their hazel depths. “Sawyer, we’ve been over this.”
“No, we haven’t. I’ve tried to bring it up, but you won’t discuss it.”
“Because there’s nothing to discuss.”
“Paxton, we—”
“We spent the night together.Onenight. That’s all it was, Sawyer. I’m over it.”
It was difficult to ignore the hurt that flashed across Sawyer’s face, but Paxton knew it was for the best. Acknowledging that her words had the ability to hurt him would require her to also acknowledge that there actually was more than just sex between them, and she wasn’t willing to do that.
His strong jaw was rigid with tension. His stony gaze held a hint of mockery.
“I guess you think I should just get over it, too,” he said, his lips tilting in a cynical smile.
“Sawyer—” Paxton started, but she stopped before she could apologize.
This was what she wanted. She wanted him to get over it and not bring up that night ever again. Because while he may have thought it was a night of shared passion, for her it represented something entirely different.
It was one of the most selfish acts she’d ever committed.
She’d used him that night. Unrepentantly.
She had known he was hurting that night. It had been visible on every part of his face. Paxton had been floored to even see him in her part of town. The only people who tended to hang out in Landreaux were the people who lived there. Paxton was hoping that would change when her mother’s new and improved bar officially reopened tonight, but realistically there was nothing else in Landreaux to entice people who lived in the southern portion of Gauthier to cross the creek.
But Sawyer had come out to her neck of the woods that night three years ago. He’d told her that he’d just returned from the hospice care facility in Slidell where he had brought his father.
His voice had held so much hurt as he shared that it was the step he had dreaded since the moment the doctors told him his father’s cancer was terminal. He’d gone through the same with his mother back when they were in high school, and Paxton remembered that period when his normally smiling face had been drawn and distant. The golden boy had lost a bit of his usual luster.
Like it had for his mother many years prior, moving into hospice care had signaled the final stage for his father.
Paxton had taken pity on him. How could she not when she could see how much he was hurting?
She’d served him one drink and then another. Then she’d joined him at the end of the bar after he begged her to do so. Paxton had promised one quick drink before she had to go back to work, but it had been a slow night at Harlon’s, and most of the patrons were regulars who didn’t require constant attention.
She and Sawyer had shared a drink, and they’d talked. She’d leaned on the bar and talked to him for more than two hours in an attempt to get his mind off his troubles. Then she’d offered to drive him home, to the huge house he’d grown up in on Elm Street in the heart of Gauthier. A home she used to stare at with longing, wondering what it looked like on the inside.
Once there, Paxton’s well-meaning generosity had taken a back seat to her selfishness. Forgetting that she was there to help him, she’d decided to help herself to the one man she’d always longed for.
She’d taken advantage of him that night, preying on his vulnerable state of mind and finally fulfilling her fantasy. It had been everything she’d expected and more, but when she awoke the following morning, Paxton had been so ashamed that she could hardly stand to look at herself in the mirror.
All she had to do was reverse their roles to realize how disgusting her actions had been. If it were Belinda she had just taken to hospice care, and Sawyer had used her in that way, she woulddespisehim for it. He just didn’t realize that he should feel that same way about her.
As she looked at him across the table right now, Paxton felt a pang of the same guilt she’d felt the morning following their one-night stand. She’d hurt him again with her lie—because God knew she was not over sleeping with him.
Picking up bits of potato chip crumbs from the table with the pad of her finger, she cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
His brow rose. “Did you snap?”
“You know what I mean. I didn’t mean to sound so harsh.”
He rested his forearm on the table and leaned forward. “You just told me that you’re over sleeping with me. Tell me how that wouldn’t sound harsh to any man?” he asked, his deep voice edged with tension.
