Page 38 of Slow Hands Cowboy

If she wanted to thank him.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed in the cabin, and pressed her knees together, curling her hands into fists.

Because it was way too easy to imagine sinking to her knees and giving him the best thank you she knew how to give.

She didn’t know why thinking about dropping to her knees in front of Walker made her stomach feel hollow, made her feel hot all over. She didn’t like giving blowjobs. She did it, because it was often an efficient way to please Alan instead of having to go through all the drama of having sex and faking an orgasm when her brain was too busy for her to enter into that situation, but she wouldn’t say that she got anything out of them, but there was something about this fantasy…

And then she remembered his comment about prom.

She let out a hard breath and looked up at the ceiling.

That had been the single meanest thing she’d ever done, and she went out of her way to never think about it. She had told herself that he never thought about it. That it had been a prank, but she knew that it was more than that.

She had been inexcusably awful to do that to him. But it had been a whole thing – with Alan, actually – where he had badgered her into doing it, and she had because she had been trying to prove that she didn’t feel anything for Walker Grayson.

She did. That was the issue. She’d been attracted to him and Alan — who hadn’t been her boyfriend yet but more of a situationship — had badgered her about it enough times that she had wanted to prove something. So, she had asked him out with the full intention of not following through with it, to prove that she could, to prove that she had power over the feelings that she had for him, to prove that it wasn’t a thing.

It was something she hadn’t seen the aftermath of, because that’s what ghosting was. You never had to look the other person in the face.

And he had never acted bothered by it. But it was the first thing he had said to her when she brought up fake dating, and that meant that when he looked at her, it was the thing he thought of. She had worked very hard to make it not the thing she thought about when she saw him.

Maybe part of her wanted to make up for that, maybe part of her wanted for him to be angry, for him to hold it over her and tell her that she had to pay him back at –

She snapped back to the moment. She was headed into some weird, fever fantasy territory that she just didn’t… that wasn’t her.

Ever, at all.

She wasn’t all that bothered with sex. And she left that thought there, didn’t let anything else push in, didn’t allow anything else to crowd into her brain.

She let out a breath and picked up her phone. She didn’t usually cold call Anna without texting first, but there was no point sending a text about any of this. Also, she’d rather not have any of it in writing.

“Are you alive?”

“I’m alive,” she said.

“Thank God,” Anna said. “It’s been days. I was worried that I was getting a phone call from police telling me that they found you dead in the woods.”

“I would never go to the woods, Anna, even in despair, also, I’m not going to die over a man.”

“I do appreciate that about you.”

“Mind you, a whole bunch of people on the Internet have said I should probably die, since Alan doesn’t want me, but I don’t resonate with that.”

“Again, this is why I love you and always have.”

“But then, you also know that I’ve already broken up with him once.”

“More than once,” Anna said.

“True. I’ll get through this one too.” Of course, it was so much heavier to break up with him now, because it was losing a whole plan for the future. Security, a home that they had planned to build, kids they planned to have, and then there was the public humiliation on top of it, the logistics of moving out of a home, all of that, but at the same time, right then, emotionally it didn’t feel any more complicated. She was going to go ahead and take that as a gift and not worry about whether or not it was shock or her telling herself a lie. Because it felt good to not have to worry about that.

“I’ve just been trying to hold everything on pause, and make sure I don’t say the wrong thing.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I probably should’ve given you a little bit more help.”

“No,” Anna said. “You were allowed to be upset. You were allowed to go underground for a minute. I get it.”

“Thanks. So… Walker has a plan.”